


Ephemeris

by Polly_Lynn



Series: Lunar Cycle [3]
Category: Castle
Genre: Angst, F/M, Family, Gen, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-09-11
Packaged: 2018-02-06 11:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 40,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1856922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"His mother is steady as ever. An invaluable bellwether. A check on hope and despair alike. But Kate had never imagined how following where this conviction leads would open them both up to this. To the exquisite ache of memory." A post-For Better or Worse multi-chap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A few things. First, his grew out of "Perigee" and "Apsis." I am presenting it as a separate story, because I think those stand on their own. This is more strongly informed by those two, but I still feel like it's a separate entity. I'd recommend reading "Perigee" and "Apsis" as the prologue to this, and as such, I'm pulling those stories and this into a series. Second, this is not a grand, plot-centered work. So if you're looking for something action-heavy, this is not it. It moves through events, but the focus is definitely on character/relationships. Ok, I guess I'll leave it at that.

* * *

She wasn't counting on this part. Being elbow deep in his childhood like this. If it were her alone, there might be a kind of macabre pleasure in it. The only closeness possible now, and they've never been strangers to intimacy under grim circumstances. Her and him.

But she'd never counted on having to call on Martha like this.

His mother is steady as ever. An invaluable bellwether. A check on hope and despair alike. But Kate had never imagined how following where this conviction leads would open them both up to this. To the exquisite ache of memory.

They're piecing together his medical records. There's DNA. His, of course. It's his car. It _was_ his car. There's no question about that. No question that he was driving it five minutes before the crash. It's open and shut as far as everyone else is concerned.

But the body itself is badly damaged. Parts of it are badly damaged. It's to be expected. The accident. The fire. And yet . . .

 _Not suspicious, exactly._ _Convenient._

Lanie had been reluctant to say anything with only the reports to go on. They're all reluctant. The five of them. They've each added things to the common stock. Nagging things. Nothing big. Nothing blatant, and that's the problem. They're careful. They weigh every possibility—every hunch and every blip on the radar—a hundred times over before the words make their careful way into the air.

_I think I have something._

_It could be nothing._

It's become a mantra for the five of them now. Something that goes along with a grim almost-smile. Because hope is the thing they crave and the thing they fear.

So she and Martha are sifting through his childhood hurts, big and small. Something that should be there, but isn't, maybe. Because it might not be him. It might not be, and this is where they start.

It's where they're supposed to start. Making sense of these far-flung things. Incidents in his life, scattered from city to backwater town and home again. It's the strangest kind of blessing now. That they moved so much when he was a kid, and even routine things were catch as catch can a lot of the time.

Rushed clinic visits at odd intervals. Private schools willing to bend on records. What history there is jumbled into boxes. Stained and half legible too much of the time. There are gaps upon gaps, but it's the very thing that gives her hope there's something here they can use. They're piecing it together.

It's what they're supposed be doing anyway, but Martha falls away into stories she's eager to tell. Kate leans in. She listens, rapt and hungry to hear.

She knows his versions sometimes. Castle's. They're funnier that Martha's. Funnier in different ways. Or rawer. Martha always knows somehow. When he's told Kate his side of things, and it cut deep. Martha nods. Never defends herself, exactly, but there's another side. Hurts he never fully understood. That he couldn't have understood, young as he was.

And there are stories Kate doesn't know at all. Things he never told that Martha offers with the armor of time and distance. Her own brand of resilience against unkindness and hardship. But they both see the omissions as they must have been for him. The broken down pieces of him that time couldn't build up again. Things he couldn't quite speak about yet.

"I put too much on him." Martha smooths the curling corners of the page laid out before her. Kate stirs herself. Tries to remember where they were. A prescription that went unfilled, it looks like. "It was a terrible apartment. I can't even remember why I had him up in the crawl space. Five stitches high up on the inside of his arm."

Kate blushes. She remembers the scar. Planting her chin on his bare chest and tracing it with a lazy fingertip. Raising a shiver over his his skin, even though the sun was pouring over them.

_Knife fight._

She'd asked. He'd insisted on the story for the better part of a day. Embellishing all the while.

_Pirates. One of them had a monkey. I didn't_ _'_ _think he_ _'_ _d be able to work a switchblade. Or jump that high._

_Duh. Monkeys jump, Castle._

She'd played along. Laughed out loud in spite of herself.

She remembers the scar.

"Your mother's cigarette holder," Kate says softly. He'd told her as they were dropping off to sleep that same night. No particular reason for him to give up his story, except he did that sometimes. Playful to serious with the setting of the sun, and sometimes he'd tell her things in the dark. "You had a box of your parents' things up there."

"Vera!" Martha gives a startled laugh. Something small with a little delight in it. "I was auditioning for Vera in _Mame._ I strolled into the audition all decked out. Got the part, too."

"Vera." Kate smiles. She tucks away the detail. "He couldn't remember the play."

Kate starts to clear the table. Martha is fading. The drive to the city wears on her. The stories—good and bad— take their toll, and anyway, they've been at this a long while. She crosses stacks they have sorted by year at least. A few flags stuck to the edges. A pageful of notes, but not much.

Martha rises to help. Kate thinks about telling her no. About pressing her shoulder. Taking her hand and leading her up to her room. Settling her into the cool dark and whispering _rest,_ but she holds her tongue. Martha wants to help, and it's the idle time that's worst for her here.

They both fall into quiet. The lure of the past and the weight of the present—the future maybe—tug them one way, then the other. A scrawled note catches Kate's eye. She can barely make most of it out. Doctor's handwriting, for sure, but the name tugs a thread.

"He named a character after him." She holds the note up for Martha. Taps the bold _MD_ that ends the page with a flourish. " _A Skull at Springtime_."

"He was a neighbor of ours." Martha takes the paper from her. She flinches back from it. The name. "There was . . . oh, some girl about Richard's age. Somebody's daughter. Richard jumped off something backstage to impress her and hurt his foot. I brushed it off like it was nothing, but by the middle of the night the pain was unbearable. It wasn't like Richard to complain."

Kate's glance is swift, disbelieving.

" _Then,_ darling. He wasn't one to complain _then._ " Martha chuckles, but it fades all too soon. "It was a hard time. And he had it in him to be stoic when circumstances demanded." She toys with the edges of the paper. "Dr. Lindholme was . . . oh, very man-to-man with him. Richard adored him. Probably needed that from someone. As for me, the good doctor was very _direct._ He read me the riot act for stalling. But the emergency room was out of the question. Money. Time . . . "

"It was just a sprain, though." Kate takes up the story. She remembers this. Staying up late and talking about their childhood rooms the night he'd hung their shells in place of Linus. "He had an x-ray?"

"Yes!" Martha nods eagerly. "I'd forgotten. He was fascinated with it. A sign of things to come, I suppose. He punched a hole in the top and hung it from a piece of fishing line in his room. Every room for a year or two. I don't know what became of it. I should have . . . " She presses her palms to the flap of a disintegrating accordion file. "I should have taken better care."

"No, Martha. No." Kate ducks to catch her eye. "We've made a lot of progress. And . . ."

She breaks off. Something about the story that strikes her belatedly. "The doctor thought it was broken, but it wasn't . . ."

"I that . . . would that help?"

"No." Kate's mind is racing. She rests a hand on Martha's elbow. It snaps her attention back. She's trembling. Agitated. "No, Martha, not that one . . . the lower body . . . " She chokes back the cold, clinical details, but Martha waves for her to go on. "The damage to the lower body was too extensive. That's why the x-ray from last year—from his knee—doesn't do us any good."

Martha looks at the haphazard stacks littering the table. Her eyes are wide. "I don't think . . . I don't remember him breaking any bones as a child. And you have everything from college on."

"Not everything," she says. "When he came to DC . . . but it could be . . ."

"It could be nothing," Martha finishes, but there's a spark in it. She stands straighter. Moves easier.

It scares Kate. She wants to say it again. To warn her, but she holds her tongue. Martha knows. They all know.

It could be nothing.

* * *

It's not nothing. She knows with steely certainty that it's not. She tells even Martha as little as she can. It's too fragile. This tiny flicker of real hope. Real evidence. She folds herself around the notion and begs Martha not to say anything to the others just yet.

Martha nods. She bends, though Kate knows she won't bite her tongue forever.

"For now." She tells her. She swallows against everything that rises up. Hope and fear alike. "I need . . . I need the pieces first."

It's not nothing, but it might still get them nowhere anyway. Something more than suspicion that it's not him. The body in the car isn't his and nothing more than that. It might be the worst of all possible worlds.

Martha doesn't know about the car accident. Bronson crashing them into a bus shelter as he died. Kate had half forgotten it herself. Something so minor in the grand scheme of things. Then and now.

 _Relief._ That's her first memory of it, really. Relief when he started complaining that his hand hurt. That's what reminds her. That rush of joy at his over-the-top whining and bids for attention, both surer signs than anything that he was getting better. That he was going to be fine.

 _I_ told _you it was broken, Beckett._

And it had been. A hairline fracture of the left fourth metacarpal, probably from bracing his hands on the dash. A minor thing, and already so well on the way to healed by the time they'd x-rayed it that the doctors shrugged and gave in when he refused the splint. He was too eager to write to let that slow him down, but he insisted on a bandage for show.

_Maybe I_ _'_ _ll finally get some sympathy, Beckett. Maybe the girl I like will sign it._

She hadn't, though. She'd unwound it with shaking fingers. Fallen over his body and pressed her lips to his bare palm. Apologies and weak protests against his skin.

_We can_ _'_ _t. Too soon. The doctors said . . ._

_Don_ _'_ _t care. Don_ _'_ _t care, Kate._

The records are gone. Everything from the accident on never happened. That's the official story from Walter Reed. From Goldberg. The EMTs can't even verify they were there. She remembers that now, too. Suits at the scene of the accident strong-arming them into handing over the records because it was an active investigation. She backs off casual channels after one too many suspicious voices on the other end of the line.

She doesn't give up, though. It's not an option. Everything that might or might not have existed is officially gone, but she knows. Even from so short a time there, nothing is ever really gone. Someone, somewhere might want to use it some day and "gone" is a matter of perspective. Leverage is the only constant and she has less than none.

But she rushes headlong at it anyway. She pushes every button she can think of.

It's Hendricks who comes through. A call out of the blue after McCord has put her off again and again.

 _Beckett, do you_ know _what you_ _'_ _re asking?_

_I know what I'm asking._

But there's silence, then. A handful of words before she hangs up.

 _I_ _'_ _ll see_ and _there might be something._

Nothing more than that before she drops off the face of the earth again. He never says _no_. Not once, and Kate can't decide if it's better or worse. The thread of hope drawn taut or having it snapped entirely.

It's Hendricks who calls, finally. Under a minute in the middle of the afternoon when she hasn't heard from him in months. She hasn't heard from anyone—not a word—because it was a job and nothing more. She's hardly had time to register that it's him. That McCord must have asked him in the end. That this all takes forever to filter through back channels and innuendo and still she's grateful for it. She's grateful to them both.

Hendricks is hanging up before she really grasps any of it. But it stays with her. His last words.

 _No promises. But I have a friend._ _It might be nothing._

But it's not nothing. It's an envelope a few days later. She almost doesn't open it. She gets these every few weeks, even a year on. Mounds and mounds of paperwork. She tears into the envelope, though, because hope is all she has, even when she tells herself it's nothing. And there it is. A picture of a X-Ray. Something the size of an old snapshot buried in all that. Buried among parts of her past she signs away.

But she has this now, and it might be worse than nothing.

* * *

"Kate!"

Lanie pulls her inside. It's the middle of the night, and Kate didn't mean to come. She meant to wait until morning, but here she is, shaking from head to toe.

It's not nothing, but it might be worse.

She hands it over without a word. She doesn't explain. Lanie doesn't ask.

She paces while Lanie checks and rechecks. As she holds it up to the light and rifles through the meager file. Through the little they have.

She sets it down, finally. She tucks it inside and closes the folder. She sits staring. Silent.

"Lanie . . ." Kate breaks. She drops into the chair across the table.

She reaches out, desperate to have it back—something the size of an old snapshot—but Lanie stays her hand.

"Leave it," she says gently. "We'll need it."

Kate presses her forehead to her fists and the tears don't come. For the first time she's dry eyed and gulping air.

"It's not him, honey." Lanie coaxes her chin up. She waits for Kate to look at her. Nods when she's satisfied and gives her the words again. "It's not him."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Every time, Martha listens, quiet and unshakeable. Every time, she is the same, immovable object. _She_ _'_ _s a grown woman. She_ _'_ _s his daughter. I can_ _'_ _t keep it from her, darling. I won_ _'_ _t._ _"_
> 
> * * *

Kate stares at the neat line of Martha's bags waiting by the door.

There's movement upstairs. Martha's heels tapping back and forth. Last-minute things, though Kate would like to think she's stalling. That she won't leave with this fractured mess between them.

That she'll listen.

But she _has_ listened. It's the knife that twists, and Kate hates the unkindness in herself. The sharp edge of fear that won't let her admit it, even inside her own mind. Martha's done nothing _but_ listen. She's nodded and let Kate say her piece, time and time again since she came down the stairs to find Kate motionless at the dining room table. Yesterday. Just yesterday that she let the words leave her own mouth for the first time.

 _It's not him. Martha, it's not_ him.

Martha has been quiet. Steely after the initial rush of joy and even that was almost wordless. Almost.

_Alexis. My God. Kate, it's . . . I don't care what time it is in California._

She's heard everything since then. Every word Kate has managed to choke out.

That they don't know anything, really. That he could be dead anyway. Some other place. Some other way. He could be dead, and it's cruel to make anyone else live like this. To make _her_ live like this.

She's listened to every argument. That it could jeopardize the investigation. It could put Alexis in danger, because they have no idea who's involved or what they want. Who or what else they might use to get it.

Every time, Martha listens, quiet and unshakeable. Every time, she is the same, immovable object.

 _She_ _'_ s  _a grown woman. She_ _'_ _s his daughter. I can'_ _t keep it from her, darling. I won_ _'_ _t._

Martha appears at the top of the stairs, fastening on an earring. Zipping something into the case dangling from the crook of her elbow. Kate raises her eyes, hopeful to the last, but it drains away in the lift of Martha's head. In the set of her shoulders. She's not stalling. She's going.

Kate's chin drops to her chest. The floor swims before her. Everything in her burns. Everything hurts so badly that she's not even aware that Martha is near until she's limp in her arms, sobbing.

Martha waits for her to quiet. Silent herself until Kate stills at last.

"I'm sorry, dear." She catches a few stray tears with her thumb and smooths the hair back from Kate's face. "I'm _truly_ sorry."

"You're sorry." Kate straightens. Pulls away. Her voice is a wreck like the rest of her. "But you're still going to tell her."

It's flat and cold. Cruel enough that Martha flinches. Cruel enough that Kate breaks a little more.

She expects Martha to leave. To go without looking back. It's no more than she deserves, but she's motionless at Kate's side. Wounded, patient, and silent.

"Martha . . ." Kate turns to her, more than half afraid to look, but Martha gives her a weak smile. She opens her arms like always. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Martha soothes her. She lets a few tears of her own slip. She speaks. Tentative. Not the words themselves, but how to say them. What she has to say has the solidity of something long in coming. Kate realizes it's the first time. That for all the hours Martha has spent listening, she's never explained. She's never said her piece.

"I watched, you know, darling." It's her story-telling voice. Some wan, thinned-out version of it. She's as exhausted as Kate is. Worn out with hope and fear and the distance that stretches taut between them over this. "I watched Richard fall in love with you. And I watched him lie to you. Every time with the best of intentions. To spare you, to protect you. To save face and keep _some_ place in your life when he thought you'd never love him. When neither of you would see that you already did."

The words sink to the pit of her stomach. She's sick with it. Every memory like a new wound. But she listens. She owes Martha that at least.

"I begged him—every time, I _begged_ him—to be honest with you." There's frustration in it. Still, after all this time, though it's softened to something closer to sadness. Gentled for her sake. For Kate's, because what's coming next is harder still. "And I held his hand every time another lie blew up in his face. His _and_ yours."

Martha looks down at her lap, surprised to see their hands knotted tight there. Kate's surprised, too. That even in this—even after the way this has battered the two of them—they come together.

"I don't claim to know better. I don't know if two people as stubborn as you had to go through it all like that. If you'd have burned each other to ashes years ago otherwise, or if maybe you would have had . . ." Her voice breaks. "If you would have had more time."

Kate's eyes close. A brilliant fantasy on the back of her eyelids. _Time._ The thousand things they might have done with it. All the ways they might have wasted it. But _time._

"Katherine, you and Alexis are all the family I have left. For now. Maybe for good." The steel creeps back into her voice. Conviction. The immovable object. "I have heard every word you said. I know everything we don't know and how little we have to go on. But it's more than Alexis has. And I can't let her go on with nothing."

Kate is unmoving as Martha uncurls her fingers, gentle as ever. She's still, the scent of powder and perfume filling her mouth and nose as Martha leans in to kiss her cheek in her own silent goodbye. Frozen until she hears the tumble of the lock.

Her eyes open, then. A decision made.

"Can you bring her home?" The sound of her own voice is alien. Far away and so unsure. "Can we tell her together?"

* * *

They decide on the Hamptons. Martha decides, really, and Kate is tugged along. She has no idea how to do this. It's what Alexis wants, anyway, and Kate is surprised. Startled and envious of the girl's certainty that this is where she wants to come home to. Aching underneath.

Kate will leave. Whatever happens—however it goes—she will go back to the city and the two of them will stay. That's the subtext, and it _hurts._

Martha goes alone to meet the train from the city.

Kate wanders the house, trying not to feel frantic. Trying not to think of coming exile. She's so unprepared for this. _So_ unprepared, but it's easier than she feared it might be. Easier here. It wraps around her. The certainty and relief of this place, wholly altered and wholly the same.

She traces her own steps. She turns the same pages and curls up in his robe. She leans her forehead against the glass and sees storms rolling in the way he always did. A vivid cast of characters in the swell of clouds and the skirl of wind over the water.

_She's not really angry. She was worried._

He'd pulled her in front of him, closer to the window to watch the clouds part and the sun stream through. Silver and gold piercing the grey as the storm broke up and drifted away.

_Worried?_

_Worried. See how her brow is still all furrowed up. Like yours gets . . ._

She'd reached back to pinch him, but he'd stolen her hands. Held them up to sketch the shape of thunderheads in the distance, and she'd given in. She'd leaned into him. Turned her face to breathe him in.

_Why is the storm always a woman?_

_She just is. One of the great mysteries of the universe. The storm is always a woman._

It's not that his presence is stronger here. He's everywhere, now she's learned to recognize him. The loft. Her apartment. The precinct. She's learned to hear him. To let her mind go where his would and to feel him propping her up when she can't go through the motions of this. Of everyday life. He's everywhere if she'll let him be. But here it's easier to rely on the strength that comes with knowing he's somewhere in the world.

He _is._ Whatever she's said to Martha—whatever they all say out loud to keep hope in check—the conviction that he's not gone carries her from moment to moment and day to day. She's past caring whether it's logic or fate. Whether it's her mind or her soul that knows.

She knows. And _she_ is stronger here. Surer of her place and the job she has to do. Because this isn't the place filled with the last things he did. It's filled with the things he left unfinished.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you for reading and for the support on Ch. 1


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Alexis is quiet through most of it. A stranger to Kate with her red-rimmed eyes and the careful way she moves through the world now. A mirror for now and then."

Alexis is quiet through most of it. A stranger to Kate with her red-rimmed eyes and the careful way she moves through the world now. A mirror for now and then.

She's exhausted, but it's more than that. It's more than the toll a weary journey might take. She's devastated. So pale that the light of the lamp from his desk seems to shine right through her. But for all that—for all the ruin of a life just getting started—she's composed, the serious air she's always had deepened to something grave now. Something heartbreaking to see, all the more because Kate sees how it hits Martha. How all their brave faces are fragile things.

The air is oddly formal. Alexis takes her bags to her room and reappears immediately. Even Martha foregoes any social pleasantries, simply taking up her station with her arm tight around the girl where she sits, practically unmoving, with her hands in her lap.

Kate takes her cues from the two of them. She lays out what they know and how they know it. Takes the blame for their silence up to this point. Martha swallows hard and nods her thanks at that, but there's little enough reaction from Alexis that Kate almost wonders how much she's actually taking in.

She's not alone in that. The two of them share concerned looks over the girl's bent head and Martha takes on more of the story, as though it might help. She adds things here and there. She softens the edges when Kate retreats into something distant. Something professional. She tempers the unkind details.

And she calls a halt to everything two or three times. Unfailing instinct and things hidden as far as Kate can see. A shift in the air circling around them that tell her it's too much. That Alexis is about to break. Martha stops then, and their heads bend together. Their hands find one another's, taking and giving wordless comfort.

For Kate, it's like watching from outside her own body. A new kind of anguish as she waits. Something she knows the shape of all too well, but can't call her own. She knows Castle better in that moment. She remembers all the times it hurt him to stand by and watch Alexis struggle because there was nothing else for it. Standing by, watching the two of them lean so completely on one another, Kate knows him with something deeper than empathy.

She stands ready to do anything and nothing. But neither of them asks. Neither of them says anything at all until Martha looks up. Until she tightens her arm around Alexis nods for Kate to go on.

Even so—even with these eternal moments—it takes no time at all. There's so little. _So_ little. Kate holds out her hands. An apology. An admission that this is all they have. A promise that there are no more secrets.

They are suspended. The three of them fixed in silent space, together and apart, and Kate doesn't know how they go on from here. How they do this.

It's Alexis who moves first. Who makes the world turn again. She lifts her head. Sits forward and tucks her hair behind her ears. Kate's breath catches in her throat. There's a spark in her at last.

Somewhere deep beneath pain and beautiful gravity, there's a glimmer of the bright young thing who couldn't let a mother's memory book go unclaimed. The kind, determined young woman who worked tirelessly by Lanie's side and found meaning in ugliness. She is there. In pieces, and forever altered, but there.

She breaks the silence. Her voice quiet, but clear as she lays a steady hand over Martha's.

"Gram, I'd like to talk to . . . to Kate alone."

Martha goes uneasily. She says a quiet word in Alexis's ear. Embraces Kate and presses a kiss to her forehead. Her hand lingers on the doorframe, but she goes.

Kate's fingers flutter. A silly, involuntary gesture as the last bright flash of her disappears around the corner, even though she thinks it's easier, somehow. She's not proud of that truth, but it's a tether cut for her. Maybe for both of them.

Alexis is a stranger, but a mirror too. For then and now. Kate today. Kate at nineteen.

She sees the possibility of ugliness here. More than the possibility. Fury. Hate. Blame. Each is awful. Each wounds. But it's easier without the anchor of Martha's love. Easier knowing that at least she won't have to watch. Maybe for both of them.

She perches on the edge of a chair. Something hard and decorative. She remembers Castle swearing he'd been bullied into the piece. The upright back hits her spine and she half smiles with sympathy she'd made him work for then. It really is awful, but she feels perversely like she might deserve it.

It places her directly opposite Alexis. She clasps her hands loosely on her knees and waits. The subtext isn't lost on her. An interrogation tableau, though she doesn't seem to be in her usual seat.

"He's not dead." Alexis is slow and deliberate with the words, like she's tasting them. She looks up sharply. A warning that she's not finished. That Kate has had her turn. "I know what you said. That just because it wasn't . . . because it was someone else's body in the car doesn't mean . . . but you don't believe he's dead."

"I don't." Kate hears the words. She tastes them as they leave her mouth, swift and unexamined. She waits for regret. She hesitates, but it's too long in coming if it's there at all. "Whoever did this could have killed him in that accident. They didn't. They went to a lot of trouble . . ."

Alexis breaks in. " . . . but you don't _believe_ it." Anger clouds her face, visible for the first time. Frustration as she lays her hand over her heart. As she makes a helpless gesture to Kate's.

"I don't believe it." Her voice cracks. The words break. A flood of other words rises up to choke her. Caveats and disclaimers. Cautions, because she knows but she doesn't _know._

But Alexis nods. It's austere. Sober, but . . . pleased? Satisfied. She's _satisfied_ by it, though Kate doesn't know why. She hasn't the faintest idea.

"Whoever did this . . ." Alexis moves on. She's brusque, even though she's turning Kate's words over in her mouth. A leaf from Martha's book. "Is this about your mother?"

It startles Kate. It's painful. The hard edge of suspicion underneath. The bitterness and fear lessened with time but not forgotten. It hurts to see from here—to see it this way, across from another grieving daughter and only the table is different.

Alexis has grown up in the shadow of it all. She knows that, but this is seeing. The grim history is written in the shadows behind her eyes, so much a part of this new, grave face she wears. Montgomery. Her own shooting—she'd been there. She'd watched Castle run headlong at her. Headlong into the path of a bullet for all they knew. And after. The long months and the toll it took on them. All of them. The way this has spiraled out and taken hold of so many lives.

It hurts, this raw confrontation that's a long time in coming. It opens yet another wound.

But it . . . _impresses_ her, too. The steely way she sets everything aside for one dispassionate question. Kate wishes badly that Castle were here to see this. To see the beauty in the way she puts the pieces together. All order and logic and leaps of intuition that would make him beam. It makes her wish she had any right to lay a hand on the girl's shoulder and tell her how very proud he'd be.

But she owes her an answer.

"It's a possibility," Kate says when she thinks her voice is steady enough. "But I think it's unlikely."

"You _think_."

"I _believe._ _"_ Kate rises to the challenge in her voice. Satisfaction of her own creeping in that she doesn't understand any better. "Bracken is done. Any friends he might've had have distanced themselves. His assets are locked down tight, and a lot of people from local government all the way to Washington stand to gain by making an example of him."

It's nothing she hasn't said before. It's no more than thinking out loud, but it takes on a different realness here. To look, unflinching, in his daughter's eyes and tell her that it's over. "We have to consider it—we _are_ considering it . . ."

"We?" Alexis folds her arms. Hardness where she was just beginning to soften. "Not you?"

"Not me." Kate shakes her head. There's a kind of light dawning. Something coming clear, even as she speaks. "Bracken would try to play me. Details he's held back . . . whatever he thinks I might give a damn about. I don't have time to waste on that. Ryan has the coolest head, and Bracken doesn't really know him. Esposito is on it, too, but Ryan is taking the lead."

Alexis nods. A sharp gesture and there's satisfaction in that, too. Like Kate has given the right answer. Exactly the right answer.

But it ends with her head bowed, as though the effort costs her the last of whatever's propped her up this long. She takes a shuddering breath, but it's no good. Her shoulders shake and when she lifts her eyes, all the years she carries are gone. She's a fatherless little girl, pleading.

"You'll find him?"

She's _pleading,_ and every caveat evaporates. Every qualification and cautionary note disappears. There's nothing left in Kate but determination. Will.

"I will find him, Alexis" She reaches her hand across the infinite space of the table between them. She breathes out when Alexis takes it and a weight she didn't know she'd been carrying lifts. "I promise you."

* * *

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "But it's only in this moment that it's clear to her. Stupid and distracted and _done_ _,_ she realizes she's been expecting him all along."

She stops for coffee. She's less than an hour from the house, but her eyes have that stark, staring feeling that signals real fatigue.

The car wheels crunch over the gravel of the parking lot. It takes her a minute to recognize the thump of déjà vu against her skull. She's been here before. Once. They were here together.

_Beckett._ Really?

He'd been annoyed. Little boy frustrated in a way that had long since become unusual. She'd only noticed the shadows under his eyes as they pulled in under the sickly orange of the parking lot lights.

_Yes, Castle. Really._

_But we're close._

_Not so close you and this fine leather interior won't regret not stopping._

That had gotten a laugh, but he wouldn't come in. _Unusual._ He'd stood by the car kicking at the gravel. Impatient all out of proportion to a five-minute delay. She'd brought him coffee. An apologetic gesture that left him the one looking contrite.

_What's your hurry?_

She'd held on to his sleeve as he took the cup from her, and he'd mustered up a wicked grin. It was a little threadbare, though. It had been a long few weeks.

_Got a date with weekend Beckett. Hamptons Beckett._

_And you like her best._

The words had come without permission. A quick unexpected slide into the kind of insecurity that she rarely visits any more. But she'd been tired. He'd been tired. He'd set the coffee cup on the roof of the car and swept her into his arms, landing his mouth hard at the base of her throat and dragging his lips up to kiss her.

_I love every Beckett. Every single one._

She rests her head on the wheel now. It's a mistake and it's not. Stopping here. She needs the coffee. She needs a few minutes to breathe. But the memory hits hard. Unexpected. This place they spent five minutes months ago, where she misses even the small, stumbling moments between them.

She steadies herself. Looks at the clock and realizes more time than she'd like has already slipped by. She fires off a text and the window bounces a reply almost immediately. Alexis telling her to be safe. Which hopefully means Martha is getting some actual sleep.

The woman at the register smiles. It's all-purpose at first. Something generic for customers, but then her brow wrinkles. Like she knows Kate, but can't quite place her. Kate shoves the money across the counter. She grabs the cup and doesn't wait for change. The gesture borders on rude, but she's not up for this right now.

It was a big story, even for here. Even for not quite an hour from real money and the scandals that come with it. People say the strangest things when recognition hits. They run the gamut from overly familiar sympathy to snide remarks and compliments on the dress. She's not up for it. Her tragedy lived in public.

She pushes her way out through the door, wincing at the jangling bell. Wincing as coffee slops over her hand.

She's distracted as she slides back into the driver's seat. By exhaustion and eagerness. The burn of coffee on her tongue and the echo of Martha's constant pleas that she take the train instead, or let them come to her. By the little she'll have to tell when she gets to the house. Definitely not Bracken. That's what Ryan says, and it's too little. One thing struck off a list that's too short already.

She knows they want her there for herself alone.

_We're family, Kate._

They both want her there, and she wants to be with them, whether there's news or not. Still, it's too little.

She's distracted.

_Stupid_ _._

It's the first thing she thinks when she hears the click directly behind her left ear. Details crowd in. Warning signs that flare too late. A barely flickering sodium light that had been burning bright when she parked under it. A loop of seatbelt she knows she didn't close the door on.

_You._

That's the second thing she thinks when her eyes flick to the mirror and she sees a glint of silver hair. The only thing really visible in the thick shadows thrown by a black- brimmed cap, but she searches the darkness anyway, eager to find for some resemblance. Something of Castle in him.

"Took you long enough."

She says it out loud. The third thing she thinks. Because she's been expecting him. He's come up, of course. Between her and Martha. Something sour in both their mouths. Something they've been too reluctant to push on.

_Darling, do you think?_

_I don't know. How would we even . . .?_

But it's only in this moment that it's clear to her. Stupid and distracted and _done_ _,_ she realizes she's been expecting him all along.

"Kate. I was hoping this wouldn't be necessary."

It's an unpleasant sizzle right through the middle of her. The way he dismisses her, of course, but most of all, she hates the sound of her own name on his tongue. She won't correct him, though. Pieces of her slot into place. It's clear how this will go—how this was always going to go—and her teeth come together in a terrible grin that she hides. Unshakeable focus. She'll give him nothing.

"What do you know?"

She hears him shift on the seat. A telling, uncomfortable movement in the close silence of the darkened car. He wasn't expecting the direct question. He'd been counting on the cloak-and-dagger tactics to throw her. The click of the safety on his gun. _Really?_ He thinks he's on offense, and she wants to smile. She wants to show her teeth. But she stares straight ahead. It's been weeks and he's showing his face for the first time now? Here and like this? _Nothing. He gets nothing._

"I know my son is better off dead."

It's bland. Pleasant and in control. Confident. Anderson Cross, rather than the pale imitation of a father she'd met later. Cool, except for the one syllable that makes it all a mistake.

_Son_ is a mistake. It makes her think of an awkward hug. One that meant something to Castle, even as late in the game as that, it meant something. But for _him_ it was just a maneuver. Playing the daddy card now is a mistake.

"I know that's not a threat." The words come in real time. Almost before the thoughts that call them up and send them out. There's a strange, guiding certainty to everything she says. Everything she _will_ say. "Cross, is it?"

"You can call me . . ."

"Actually, I don't need to call you anything." She cuts him off. That throws him, too. His tongue hits his teeth. She presses. "Tell me. You know who did this."

"That isn't important." His voice is level. Controlled. But there's a testy note underneath that she recognizes. He's annoyed.

_Good._ Annoyed is good for her and she knows, unerringly, how to keep him right there. She laughs. Twists at it. "Yeah. You'll forgive me if I question your priorities."

It hits the mark. He snaps at her. "My _priorities_ are to keep my son and the people he loves safe. His mother. His daughter. _You_. **"**

He leans forward like he's hoping to smell fear rolling off her. As if he can't believe this isn't working and he wants a closer look. It's another little lapse in control. She's not in a position to enjoy it. She's frozen, a single word echoing through every cell in her body. She almost turns. She almost goes over the seat at him, gun or no gun. Assassin or spy or whatever the hell he is today.

"Keep." She chokes on it. It pulls every last molecule of air from her lungs until she's leaning hard into the steering wheel, her vision black at the edges. " _Keep_ him safe. He's alive." Her eyes open wide, then, like she can let it all in at once. Realization. Certainty. "You _have_ him."

She gives too much away. Far too much in just those few words. She hears him lean back. She feels that balance shift.

"Who has him now—where he is—that no longer matters to you." There's a flatness to his voice. A total absence of warmth that's unnerving, not on its own, but in the echoes of Castle she hears. Familiar timbre and tone, just a few decades further along. Like and completely unlike. "All you need to know is the threat—to him and to all of you—is over so long as Richard stays dead. Perception is everything, Kate. You're going to leave this alone."

She closes her eyes. Centers herself again, pushing everything to the edges but the knowledge that he's alive.

_I keep making the mistake of thinking he_ _'_ _s family. But he_ _'_ _s not. You are._

There's time enough to fall apart later. Castle is _alive_.

"You can't really believe that's a possibility." Her eyes snap open. She fixes her gaze on the rearview mirror. Steady again. She lets her fingers come to rest on the bottom of the wheel and her shoulders settle. "You can't believe there's a chance in _hell_ that I will not rip the world apart until I bring him home."

"What I believe, Kate . . ." He draws out the vowel and bites off the _t._ It strikes her that he's more than just annoyed. He's spun. By her. By the fact that he can't intimidate her. By more than that and she needs to pay attention. She needs to take in every detail, and they're slipping through her fingers even now. " . . . is that you will do whatever it takes to keep Richard's family safe. I believe you know that's what he would _want_ you to do."

"What he wouldwant me to do?" She does show her teeth now. "That's an interesting choice of words. You've spent a grand total of 40 minutes in 40 _years_ with Castle, and you're going to tell _me_ what he would want?"

He's silent. Unmoving. He's trying to regroup, but the exasperation is thick around him. She doesn't need to see any more than the rigid silhouette of his shoulders to know that.

When he speaks again, it's different. Quieter and less controlled. A different tack, now. He's playing at vulnerable. Unguarded with an edge of command underneath.

"Richard once told me that if I knew him at all, I knew he'd do anything to save his family."

He lets the slightest waver creep into his voice, right at the end. It's rehearsed. Every beat is weighed and practiced and considered. Martha might give it a six out of ten. Kate frowns hard against the upward quirk of the corner of her mouth.

"If you knew his family at all, you'd know we'd do anything to save _him_." She slips the key into the ignition. She turns it, and his sharp intake of breath isn't quite lost as the radio kicks in and music fills the space. "Now get the hell out of my car."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Again, thank you to those reading and offering encouragement.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She falters, there's a single instant when she wonders if this is right. If what she can't live without might not kill them all. If she has any right to burden them with this."

Alexis throws the door wide as Kate jerks the car to a stop. Martha is close behind, still tying a robe tight at her waist. The two of them descend on her.

"Kate!" Alexis is trying not to scold, but there's lingering anxiety in the bruising force of her fingers on Kate's arm. "Gram made me promise to wake her when you got here."

"Katherine, that is _it._ You are taking years off my life, making that drive at all hours." Martha tempers the words with a smile, but she's unhappy—fear gone to anger simmering underneath. It's familiar. It wraps unexpectedly around Kate's heart. A visceral thing, how much a mother to her Martha has become.

"I'm sorry." They both stop at something in her voice. They fall silent and share a look. "We . . . let's get inside . . ." She's paranoid all of a sudden. About who's watching and how, but they can't huddle in the driveway all night. And if it's him, he won't learn anything he didn't know when she threw him out.

They nod in tandem. Alert and serious. They're quick to comply and ready for anything. She loves them both for it.

They head for the kitchen. The brightest, warmest place in the house, and what feels like the safest, even if it's an illusion. Alexis puts on coffee. Martha tugs the cork from a half-gone bottle of wine.

Another look passes between them when Kate walks over to switch on music. When she makes a circuit of the windows, drawing blinds and flipping light switches. It's pointless—if anyone with any resources at all has the house under surveillance, it's pointless—but she feels better for it.

"So here we are," Martha says with a wry smile when Kate finally joins them at the counter. She nods at the knot of mugs and wine glasses standing ready. "Armed for bear. Let's have it, kiddo."

Kate takes a breath. She closes her eyes and reaches for the connection that's always strongest here. The certainty that he's not gone.

"I had company." She opens her eyes. Turns a smile on each of them in turn to show she's ok. "I stopped for coffee. A diner off Sunrise Highway." She weighs her words. Realizes she needs something to call him after all. "When I got back to my car . . ."

"It was him, wasn't it?" Martha holds a hand up toward Alexis, her attention focused solely on Kate. "Richard's . . . It was that man, wasn't it?"

Kate nods, her voice gone. Lost in a wave of gratitude— _relief_ —that Martha knows. That she was expecting it, too, somehow. That it makes some kind of sense, even if they're miles from putting the pieces together yet.

"Alexis," Kate turns to the girl with a last glance a look at Martha. She really has no idea how much he might have told Alexis about Ted Rollins' murder. Whether Castle would have tried to leave the hero intact. The grandfather who saved her. She wonders whether Castle felt any loyalty to the man in the end. "In Paris, the man who . . ."

"Dad's father?" Alexis's eyes are wide. "This is him again? His fault?"

"We don't . . . _I_ don't know much." It hits Kate between the eyes. In the chest. Frustration. Blinding anger that she didn't get more from him. That she didn't beat him bloody and bring Castle home. Here. Now. "But he told me . . ."

She falters, there's a single instant when she wonders if this is right. If what she can't live without might not kill them all. If she has any right to burden them with this.

Her head sinks, and Martha places a hand on her shoulder. "Kate. Whatever it is—what _ever_ —we're with you."

Alexis reaches across the counter. It's what decides her. Pale fingers. Elegant now, but she pictures them as they were in a moment he told her about. A moment he'd brought to life in her mind's eye the way only he can. Tiny, waving. Curling over the edge of a pink receiving blanket to reach for his.

_Like I'd been struck by lightning._

When she speaks, her voice is strong. Steady. "He said the threat to all of us is over if the world believes Castle is dead."

It feels instant. The eruption of sound. _Joy._ There must be a moment before they can process it. But it feels immediate. The way they're knotted together, the three of them caught in an embrace that feels impenetrable.

"But that means . . ."

"My God, Katherine. You believe him . . .?"

Kate is the first to pull back. Reluctant and sober. She has to be clear. They all have to be clear on the decision they're making.

"He didn't . . . He didn't say as much. But he didn't deny it. He said we had to leave this alone to keep Castle safe. To keep us all safe."

"Well, _that's_ nonsense."

The words are Martha's, but Kate's attention is on Alexis. There's a flash of anger in her. Fury, actually, and she needs to be sure. She says the girl's name softly.

"He can't be serious." Alexis looks up, calm. Angry still, but determined. Focused. Her father's daughter. "He can't seriously think we'd let him go."

Kate smiles. Fierce. Proud. _Relieved._ "That's pretty much what I said."

Alexis smiles back. She shows her teeth. "So what do we do?"

Kate nods. Down to business.

"I need you to tell me everything about Paris."

* * *

It's beyond late when they're done. When they've reached the end of what they can do tonight, with just the three of them. It's drawn out enough as it is. Every detail worked over again and again. Paris _and_ his stay at the loft.

Alexis is quiet for that. Anger and sorrow and something more complicated that probably even she won't understand for a while. But it's clear from her still hands and Martha's restless gaze that the girl didn't know. He hadn't told her, and Kate sick at heart, taking this from her, too. The promise of family. Another person in the world she's tied to by blood and history.

Martha and Alexis won't leave things until morning. Kate tries again and again, but they're both adamant they won't sleep. That they couldn't possibly.

Alexis finally bends when Martha rises to fill a water glass and ends up gripping the counter hard, swaying with weariness. Kate takes the bad cop role. She marches Martha to the door of her bedroom.

Martha snags the doorframe with one well-manicured hand. "Are you going to lock it from the outside, Detective?"

"Do I need to?" Kate arches an eyebrow.

Martha relents instantly. Any irritation immediately a thing of the past. "Katherine. Thank you."

She takes both Kate's hands, and her silence as she chafes them in her own speaks more than her usual demonstrative displays. Kate's head bows with it. The weight of uncertainty and fear returning.

"I'm not sure you should thank . . ." She trails off. "Martha, what if this is the wrong thing. What if Castle . . ."

"Don't." Martha grabs her by the chin, all her weariness gone. Her voice is iron. "Don't you think for one _second_ that Richard would not choose the path that leads him back here. To Alexis and you . . ."

". . . and you," she finishes.

Martha smiles and kisses both her cheeks and says a quiet goodnight. She turns obediently into her room.

* * *

Kate makes her way back downstairs. She hasn't heard Alexis come up to her room, and she wants to do another circuit anyway, checking locks and drawing shades. _Pointless,_ she tells herself again, but the anxiety is boiling beneath her skin. Fierce protective instinct. His family. Hers. She has to do something.

She passes by the study on her way to the kitchen, annoyed that she's left the music playing. That she can't hear Alexis moving around or anyone else for that matter. A fraction of a second too late she registers that the study's French doors are cracked open. She's frantic. Moving at speed through the room with her heart in her throat.

But it's Alexis. Just Alexis out on the small covered deck with its steps down to the lawn at the side of the house. She's at the railing, shoulders stooped as she leans heavily on her hands.

Kate's fingers snag on the doorframe. Her heart is still slamming into her ribs and she feels like she's choking on a mouth full of angry, fearful warnings. She has to be _careful_. They all have to be careful. Stay safe. Bring him home. They _have_ to.

But Alexis turns then, a worried kind of half smile flickering over her face in the moonlight and it hits Kate with full force. How much she has to guard. The smile she wants to bring him back to.

She steps up to the railing. Alexis bumps her shoulder. "I probably . . . shouldn't be outside alone?"

"Probably not." It comes out on a shaky, grateful laugh. "Just . . . be careful. Try to be alert."

Alexis nods. A promise in the press of her fingers. They fall quiet. It's late and this has all been more than enough. She's just about to insist on sleep—that they both at least _try_ —when Alexis speaks.

"Do you think . . ." She trails off. There's something raw in the words, though. Some sliver of the fury Kate saw in her earlier. It's something she thinks neither of them should close their eyes against right now.

"Do I think what?" Kate nudges her shoulder.

"This is . . . the fact that it's him. . . ." She breaks off again. Definitely angry now. "I don't even know what to _call_ him."

"Anderson Cross," Kate says softly. It's pathetic, but she wants to give her something. She wants to draw her out, here and now, even though it's beyond late. Whatever this is, she thinks it might be easier just between the two of them. "That's what he called himself when he was in New York."

"Jackson Hunt in Paris." Alexis rolls her eyes. "Even Dad wouldn't have used those."

"I know, right?" Kate grins. "Too cheesy even for Castle."

They share quiet laughter, but it goes too soon. The easy moment dwindles to nothing, and Kate waits, helpless.

"I hate him." Alexis tilts her head back and swallows hard. "I hate him for showing up and being . . . this." She swipes at her eyes. "Dad always said it didn't bother him. That he couldn't miss what he didn't have and not knowing meant he could imagine his dad was all these amazing things."

Kate holds her breath. Presses down on the part of her that's greedy to _know_. The part of her that Meredith got to, once upon a time. She knows the story of after Paris. The things he'd come to understand, anyway. But she doesn't know this. What it was like for him—for the three of them—to have this empty place in their lives.

"After Paris, he'd say how cool it was to have a spy for a dad. But it was like he wanted _me_ to believe it. And it's . . . it's stupid." Alexis shakes her head, angry with herself in the midst of all it and Kate's heart breaks a little more. "With everything . . . I know it's stupid. We have to stay safe and we have to find my dad and then . . . whatever comes after that. And I know we have to focus . . . But I just can't help thinking how much it will _hurt._ My dad, I mean. When this is all over. Knowing that his . . ." Her fingers curl in a helpless, angry gesture. "What kind of a father _is_ he?"

"He isn't." It's unthinking. Immediate, but Kate sets her teeth and straightens her shoulders. She doesn't quite wish she hadn't said it. "Alexis, I'm sorry, I know he's . . ."

"He's not my grandfather." Her voice is low, warning. "Don't even say it."

"He's not." Kate nods. "You deserve better. You deserve to have a real grandfather. Castle deserves . . . but I think you should know that Cross or Hunt or whoever he wants to be today . . . " She stops herself. Frustrated again, because she doesn't actually _know_ much of anything. "He's not the one who did this. The accident . . . He didn't plan that, I don't think. He . . . intervened. He saved him . . ."

"And kept him from us." Alexis is implacable. Stony. "He wants to keep him from us forever. He'd have let us going on thinking he was dead."

Something flares in Kate's mind. Some question. He _would_ have. So why now? Why did he show up now?

 _I was hoping this wouldn't be necessary_.

She brushes it aside, though. Just for now. It's late, and this is about Alexis. About family and the the broken heart she doesn't want Castle to come home to.

"You're right. But we know now. And as far as your dad . . . I don't think you have to worry." She hears herself. Shakes her head. It's ridiculous. Alexis smiles a little. "About that part, anyway. Your dad . . . he's made his peace with it." She slips an arm around her shoulders and turns her toward the house. "Last time. He told me . . . he said it was a mistake to think of him as family."

"It is." She says it quietly as they make their way back into the study. "I don't." The words come a little easier. "I don't need a grandfather. I have all the family I need."

She pulls the door shut tight behind them.

* * *

A/N: Thanks for reading and for the encouragement.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She's been stupid. So _stupid_ , and now the possibilities are drowning her. All these things at the back of her mind—things she and Martha have kept mostly between them, because he's an active agent. Except he might not be. Because he's Castle's father. Except he isn't. Not in anyway that matters, and she should have been on top of this long before now."

* * *

The call is excruciating. For Kate, it's too like treading water, with Lanie and Ryan and Esposito huddled around a single phone as she sketches things in broad outlines. They answer back in non-sequiturs and innuendo. It's foolish, she knows. A waste of more time when there's so much the three of them don't know about any of this, but she's paranoid, among other things. Helpless at the the thought they might lose some slim advantage they don't even know they have. They know it's foolish, too, but they follow her lead.

On that, at least. On everything else they run roughshod over her. All of them.

Ryan insists he'll come out to the Hamptons the following day. "Jenny and I can take the train. We'll swing by the loft first and make sure there's nothing going on there you need to know about."

The loft. Her apartment. _Here._ Every place they might be under the microscope. Or worse.

"Jenny . . ." Kate's jaw is set. She hates the idea. She trusts Ryan to do this. Of course she does, and they've been down this road already. After Tyson. After Bracken set her up. She knows how vulnerable they've been all this time. But she's bowed under the weight of it already. The danger she's put them all in and now Jenny. The baby. "Ryan, I don't want . . ."

"Beckett." His voice is firm. She can practically see the three of them. Lanie and Esposito nodding. Urging him on. A united front, and it's a good cover. Friends visiting the grieving family. They're not above playing on her paranoia, and she hates it. "Jenny's mom has been bugging us for some grandma time with Sarah. And we don't like to think of you three rambling around that big house. We can ride back to the city with you."

"Katherine. Please." Martha's voice is low. For her ears only. She casts a glance at Alexis. Blatant manipulation, but the truth, too, and she doesn't flinch. "I'll feel better for it."

"I'll meet the early train," Kate says through her teeth.

She walks out after that.

She shuts herself away. It's childish. Unkind to leave them with silence like this, but it's better than the alternative. She's a razor-wire mess inside, the legacy of a long night and everything the morning has brought. The way they're _managing_ her. The way she needs it, apparently.

She replays the scene in the diner parking lot. She paces. Picks things up and sets them down again, trying to stay ahead of the rush of after-the-fact adrenaline.

She's been stupid. So _stupid_ , and now the possibilities are drowning her. All these things at the back of her mind—things she and Martha have kept mostly between them, because he's an active agent. Except he might not be. Because he's Castle's father. Except he isn't. Not in anyway that matters, and she should have been on top of this long before now.

She drags a heavy, carved wooden screen to the center of the study. She finds paper. Reams of it everywhere. Folios and notebooks and loose sheets. Lined and stark white. Rough and smooth and tissue thin. She runs her fingers over it. Pictures him fussing with pen and paper both. Hefting and chafing the sheets between his fingers.

_Does it help?_

She'd slid her palms over his shoulders, creeping up behind him when curiosity finally won out over shyness. When it drew her indoors, away from the sun and toward him. She'd never seen him work like this before. Writing chapters by hand. Pieces of them, anyway.

He'd set the pen down. Pushed the paper away and spun the creaking wooden desk chair to pull her into his lap even though he'd been determined to write. She'd been determined to leave him to it.

_Sometimes. When the words won't come. It's . . . something to do._

_It matters? The kind of paper? The pen?_

She'd let her own fingers wander where his had been so lately. She'd been watching from just outside the French doors. Voyeurism half hidden by a paperback and oversized sunglasses. She'd looked on as he riffled out stacks and stacks of different kinds of sheets before he'd settled on something thick and furry. She'd picked up the pen. Leaned over him and dodged his kiss until she'd crossed his final _T,_ loving the way the paper drank the ink in deep.

_It can. When there are . . . barriers. Roadblocks. Something that lets my hand move across the page can help. Or something that makes me slow down and pay attention. Sometimes it matters._

He'd grinned into her neck, then. Wicked, but thoughtful, too. Sharing something with her. Pleased that she wanted to know.

_Sometimes it's just stalling._

She writes by hand now. She doesn't let herself wonder which it is. Helping or stalling. She pulls open the drawers of the desk and upends mugs and cups. She spills pens out on to the blotter. They fan out like spokes on a wheel. She runs through them. Sets one down and picks up another when her hand slows, then stops. When fear and anger and loss crowd to the front of her mind and stop up the thoughts she needs to get out.

She strings rows of twine the width of the wooden screen and clips sheets to it as she finishes with them. Oblongs cramped with script. She's thinking out loud with those. Thinking on paper, and when that runs out, she moves on.

She moves around and past, because there's so much she _doesn_ _'_ _t_ know. She writes single words on oversized squares in huge block letters. Questions marks and periods. She hangs those with space in between. Pieces of the puzzle she's not filling in fast enough. Not nearly fast enough to keep them safe. To keep him within reach.

She ignores the knock on the door. Soft at first—barely audible over the drone of music—then more insistent. She ignores it. The knot of anger is still there, lodged in her stomach. Frustration she needs to work through alone. It's not fair to take it out on them. But the door opens anyway and she turns. It's Martha. She sets a tray on a low table and stands her ground.

"Martha, I'm . . ." She palms a scrap of paper she'd only just tacked up. Shuffles it under some other sheets on the desk. A small blue square.

"Furious?" She sits. Delicately plucks something from the tray and pops it in her mouth. "Exhausted? Terrified? Or is that me projecting?"

"Working." She turns back to the screen. One word at a time is all she trusts herself with right now.

"I can see that." Martha leans forward. She takes in the impromptu murder board with interest. "Looks like you've made a lot of progress."

"Well, I haven't."

"Nonsense. Look at this!" Martha rises. She steps up beside her and stoops to get a better look at one of the smaller pages. It's cramped top to bottom with words that crawl up the margin at ninety degrees. She'd run out of room working through too much. Her one and only encounter with Cross. Too few facts and too much emotion spilling over. "His handler . . . Richard's handler? Darling, did the people who did this think _Richard_ was a spy?"

"I don't know." She steps away. Removes herself. "Maybe." She drops the pen in her hand and hunts for another. A green, fine-tipped ballpoint she had earlier. "It's something Blaine said when he . . . . When he had Castle. Gemini." She spits out the name. Hates the Hollywood veneer of it. Code names and potboiler fiction. "The man who killed Ted Rollins."

"Because he sent his son. Used him." Kate's head snaps up as she hears the sharp sound of rending paper. Martha's chin sinks to her chest. She's staring down at the sheet in her hand, one ragged corner still in the teeth of the binder clip securing it to the twine that spans the screen. "He used the two of you as bait."

"He did," Kate says, her voice gentler this time. At least she hopes it is.

She takes the paper from her. A small sheet of stationery with little more than _HUNT/CROSS_ written along the top, a few bullet points underneath. More speculation than fact. Little enough of both, and at the very bottom the question that's still fizzing at the edges of her mind. _Why now?_ It doesn't matter though. It doesn't matter why he's chosen now to show up.

"I should have seen it sooner." She clips the paper back to the twine.

"Neither of us was blind to the possibility that he was . . . involved." Martha draws close to the screen again. Kate stiffens. She's a long way from being ready for a pep talk, but Martha's tone is thoughtful when she speaks again. Turned inward. "You know, I told Richard it was a good thing. The way he'd come back. That he'd given me the gift of closure." Her head dips, but there's a rueful smile descending with the gesture. "And still . . . _still_. . . since the moment you told me that Richard didn't die in that accident, some part of me held on to the idea that somehow he would. . . "

"Martha . . ." Kate's hand hovers at the older woman's shoulder. She should say something, but the words cut too close to foolish things she's been pushing down since the diner parking lot. A fantasy that flared brief and bright when she'd recognized him. _His father._ Crushing disbelief when she'd realized that he's the furthest thing from on her side.

And churning around with all of it, there's more. All the dashed hopes she hadn't even realized she'd been harboring are bad enough, but there's more. Some perverse desire that Alexis nearly coaxed from her in the middle of the night—a need to _defend_ him. A need for it to mean something that he saved them both in Paris. That he'd saved Castle again. Some screwed up determination to keep that hero alive for all three of them. For him and his family.

"Martha," she says again, but she falls silent the next second. She can't make herself do it.

Martha hears it all anyway, of course. She knows the whole of the complicated mess inside. She reaches across her own body. Over her shoulder to lay her fingers over Kate's where they've finally landed. "Oh, darling, maybe it makes us fools, but it's not wrong to _hope_ that the world will do right by the people we love."

"Hope." It's a bleak echo. Too much of the bitterness she'd like to keep to herself bleeding through. Kate pulls her hand free from Martha's. She thinks of the small square of blue paper and makes a helpless motion toward the board. "Castle doesn't have time for me to hope."

The words run out entirely. She feels it then. The slice of anger between her ribs. For Martha. For Alexis. For Castle and another thing taken from them all. It pulls her back together. This cold, quiet fury she'd never feel for herself alone. It draws her gaze back from the impossibly long road ahead to the next step. Back to the board with all its empty spaces. All the work she has to do.

"This . . . it's all speculation and a handful of facts. I should have had this all nailed down weeks ago. The first twenty-four hours. . . ." She taps the board with the back of her fingers. A wide single sheet with the word _ACCIDENT_ across the top and bullet points below. _Who? Why?_ "There's a whole other player here that I didn't even know about until yesterday, and I thought . . . I've been working under the wrong assumptions. Hope doesn't fill up a murder board."

She hears herself too late. She jerks sharply toward Martha, an apology on her lips, but there's a glint in those blue eyes. A _gotcha_ that's familiar enough to make Kate's heart skip.

"Maybe not." Martha turns toward the desk. She trails her fingers over the spray of pens and plucks one from it. Something bold. Red. She places it in Kate's hand. "But neither can you. Not alone, Kate."

"Martha, I don't even know what I'm dealing with. How far these people—whoever they are, whatever they want . . . I have no idea how far they'll go." She cracks open, fear and hope and everything spilling out. "I can't drag everyone into this. I can't ask . . ."

"You're _not_ asking." Martha breaks in. "They're with you, come what may. They love you. They love Richard. We all do, and like it or not, the weight of the world is not yours alone."

Kate's head drops. Something more like resignation than agreement. Martha squeezes her shoulder. Accepts the surrender for now. She moves for the door, but she can't quite leave it.

"And Katherine?" She produces the scrap of paper with a flourish. Impressive sleight of hand. She holds it up. Tacks back to the corner of the sheet Kate's only just taken it from. _CASTLE_ across the top in bold, emphatic capitals. And this. A small blue square and the worst of it— _they want him dead_ _—_ in tight script. "This is _not_ a murder board. Remember that and _hope_."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Sorry for the delay between chapters. Thanks for reading.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She hates how easy it is for _her_ to forget, even for the space of a few minutes. For a smile to settle over her and   
>  all this to feel normal. For life to go on."

She's red-eyed and pale the next morning. She's been up all night making her peace with this. Turning too many possibilities and too little information over and over and _t_ _rying_ to make her peace. She sees the looks Alexis and Martha exchange not quite behind her back, but they leave it at that. She's grateful.

She doesn't hate any of this any less in the light of day, but Ryan and Jenny make it hard to hold on to.

"I'm glad. So glad." Jenny folds each of them in hug. She says the words over and over, and it takes. It touches something in Kate. It settles her somehow. He's alive. It's a gift to all of them. She needs to keep sight of that.

Ryan is quiet. Smiling as Alexis and Martha crowd in on either side of Jenny when she pulls up the latest crop of baby pictures on her phone. He's steady and straight to work, though.

They leave the three of them at the front of the house, with the doors wide open and the sun streaming in. Kate drifts behind Ryan a while, but it's nerve wracking. Every tick of the sweeper has her heart racing even though she knows it doesn't mean anything. That Castle's affinity for gadgets means a host of false positives, and the house is huge.

"Beckett." Ryan finally snaps a little when she runs into him for the fifth time. "It's not really a two-man job."

"Ryan, I know the house . . ."

"Which doesn't really help." She's bristling, but he's not backing down. She sees the worry on his face, though. His sheepish, brittle smile. She must look bad. "I do a simple grid in every room. Just like the loft. Just like your place. Let me take care of this."

She folds, then, ashamed when she remembers everything he's already done. The hours they've all put in. The risk he doesn't even know about yet. _She_ doesn't even really know about. What's likely and what worst case scenarios she's inventing. She doesn't know, because . . . this first. "Ryan. I'm . . . thank you."

"Go ahead," he says gently. He counters it with a jerk of his chin. A gruff gesture that's more Esposito than him. There's work to do. "Go _ooooh_ and _aaaaah_ over my kid. I've got this, Beckett."

"I know you do." She lays a hand on his arm briefly. "I'm gonna . . ." She nods toward the the stairs. "Don't want to make Jenny mad."

"You _really_ don't."

* * *

She hates it a little bit. The ease this brings. The weight that lifts from her because Martha is smiling, and there's light in Alexis's eyes that's been missing since she came home. She doesn't begrudge them this. But she hates how easy it is for _her_ to forget, even for the space of a few minutes. For a smile to settle over her and all this to feel normal. For life to go on.

It's hardest when Martha tugs her into the heart of it. The center of their little knot. When Alexis flaps her hand at Jenny and says that Kate _has_ to see. When Jenny slips an arm around her and they're crowded together over pink-cheeked little Sarah swimming in a navy NYPD onesie.

"She grew into it!" Kate grins down at the screen. It's impossible not to. She's filled out in the last few weeks. Less of that alien, newborn look. More Kevin and Jenny and her own little personality as she stares fiercely into the camera.

"Almost," Jenny laughs. "We just took these last night. There's still a hair clip or two around the back. But I wanted you to see your gift in all its glory."

"Castle's," she says quietly. "He . . . they were out of the newborn size, but he couldn't wait. Had to order it the minute we found out you were pregnant."

Alexis lays a hand on Jenny's shoulder. She bounces up on her toes. "The next one. Show her the next one."

"It was . . ." Jenny hesitates. She tips the phone toward herself like she's reluctant, but Alexis nods encouragement. "Well, it was a conspiracy." She swipes her finger over the screen. It flicks to the new image. Another navy outfit, this one with _WRITER_ in block letters across the front. "I promised I'd help turn you into a baby person."

"And of course he'd think _this_ would do it."

It catches Kate somewhere low in her belly. A smile. A laugh that comes with that edge of sheer _annoyance_ that he alone can raise in her. He _would_ do that. Conspire against her once she'd confessed. He would.

She misses him. She misses all of him, but it's easier like this. It's easier for her heart to beat and blood to pump. It's easier to live in a room filled with people who love him, too. People who carry all the different ways he is with them.

She hates it a little bit.

* * *

"Clean," Ryan says quietly as he joins them. He stows the equipment away and slides the bag down the hallway, out of sight. "Just like the loft and your place. Visual surveillance is still possible, but . . . "

"But no one's listening." Kate presses her lips together. She swallows every question. Every second guess. It's hard. A good thing. A relief, but with a price. It's nothing, rather than something. She's glad to breathe a little easier, but she's tired of nothing to go on. "Good. That's good."

"So, what's next?" Ryan steps up behind Jenny as he asks. She tips her chin up for a kiss, and Kate wants to tell them to go. To thank them for what they've done and tell them to get as far away from whatever's coming as they can.

But there's Martha and Alexis. Their safety. There's Castle to think of, not just what they need to do to bring him home, but what he'd want for her. For all of them. She knows what he'd say to every instinct that's rising in her now. Every move she's wanted to make since the diner. It calls up their worst moments. Anger and despair battering against her. Isolation masquerading as control.

She can't do this alone. She doesn't have to. He wouldn't want her to.

"Come on," she says, and her voice is clear, if quiet. "Let me bring you up to speed."

* * *

Martha and Alexis take Jenny on a proper tour of the house and grounds while the two of them hole up in the study with her makeshift board. Ryan pulls an old, stripped-down flip phone from his bag of tricks.

"Careful as we can be." He shrugs off Kate's sharp look. "Pretty easy to listen in on any cell, but these might confuse the issue a while."

Kate smiles at the floor. Wonders how much is real and how much is for her. She'll take it. Either way, she'll take it.

He taps out an unfamiliar number. Esposito answers after a ring and a half. _"Yo. 'Bout time you two called. Lanie's here, too. What've we got?"_

Kate breathes in. She takes Martha's words to heart. She tries, and it's easier as she goes on. She fleshes out the story for the three of them. Ryan studies the board, following as she leads them through the details.

He scribbles in his own notebook from time to time. He grabs a marker and a fine-point pen from the desk. He sketches things in as they go. The sight of it—his face screwed up as he puzzles something out—along with short, to-the-point questions from Lanie and Esposito is bone-deep relief to her.

" _Castle_ _'_ _s dad is a_ spy?"Esposito drops his voice at the last word. _"_ _Man, it had to kill him not to say anything._ _"_

Ryan pales. There's a slap sharp enough to ring out even through the phone as Lanie hisses _Javi,_ but Kate laughs. It's good. A kind of normal she doesn't hate, but more than that. It's _true,_ and that fills another hollow place in her. It drives out something ugly.

However Castle feels about his father—however he _will_ feel—there's a tough, joyful, little boy in him that _does_ think it's cool. That will always see it that way. He's the son of a spy and it's so _cool._

"He _was_ a spy." She steps up to the board beside Ryan. "A little more than a year ago, he had the standing within the CIA to get Castle and Alexis out of Paris with a cover story."

" . . . but five months ago, the CIA was calling him a murderer." Ryan gives her a sidelong look. "Ted Rollins. Beckett, did you . . .?"

"I didn't know anything until pretty late in the game." She pulls her lip between her teeth. It's an apology that's only partly hers to make. Worse, it's one she wouldn't hear herself back then. One that burns in too many different ways now. "Castle thought he was protecting his father's cover."

Ryan nods. He doesn't like it, but he understands. Esposito isn't so easy.

" _Protecting,"_ he spits the word out. " _So we don't even know_ what _we don't know. What Castle might not have told you because he was_ protecting _the guy."_

There's something sharp in his tone. Something dismissive that raises Kate's hackles in more ways than one. He's goading her. Venting and she recognizes it. The two of them are more alike than either cares to admit, but he's wrong. Castle wasn't keeping any secrets. Not any more. She knows that.

It's not even that Esposito believes it. He's frustrated. And hurt. He's mourning, too. Kate tries to hold on to that, but he keeps coming. Prodding at fresh wounds and hunting for details that just don't _matter._ That they don't have time for. She's is on the verge of rising to the bait. On the verge of striking back, but there's the sound of a hand over the speaker on the other end of the phone.

Ryan gives her an uncomfortable grin. They stand awkwardly side by side, trying not listen. But even muffled, Lanie's voice is sharp, and Esposito is pissed enough to bite back at her.

It eats at Kate. Guilt, but more than that. How wrong it feels—how wrong it's always felt when to work in shadows and half truths. Montgomery and Maddox and Sophia Turner. Bracken until the very end. Until it was almost too late.

Every memory is fractured and frustrating and lonely. Even when it was her rushing away from all of them at speed. Rushing away from him and life and this family they've cobbled together and fought for. It's long since felt wrong, and she doesn't have time for it.

_"Javi!"_ The name rings out. To the walls and to the glass, then the room goes silent. Here and there. Ryan's shoulders square and she can picture Lanie and Esposito, startled and retreating to their corners. There's nothing for it but to go on.

_Enough_ , she thinks. _Enough._

"We made bad calls along the way. Castle did. _I_ did. And that's over. Everything I know—everything Castle and Alexis and Martha know—you all know. That's how it is from here on out."

The silence goes on long enough for her heart to squeeze painfully. But something shifts, then. Esposito mutters _About time,_ and all of a sudden it's like any other work day. Almost. Machinery coming to live and it's like she can breathe again.

It's almost like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's _him._ It's the absurd little details she's missing. Connections. True things and the stuff he makes up out of whole cloth. The pathos and intrigue. The way evidence becomes a story."

* * *

She needs them in the city. It's too dangerous for the two of them alone out here. Too isolated, whether or not the house is being watched, with Cross and God knows who else out there.

But leaving won't be any easier for them than going home to the loft. She knows. Kate knows.

Jenny and Ryan repair to the back porch to give them some privacy and Kate steels herself to ask. She's expecting . . . not a fight, exactly. Something worse. A fragile kind of plea that she'll give in to, and she _can_ _'_ _t._ She needs them in the city.

But it doesn't play out like that. There's no argument. No plea. Alexis is stoic. Martha's weariness shows in the droop of her shoulders, but they both nod. They both say _of course_ and murmur that it will be good to get back to the loft. Good for the three of them to be together.

They each touch her shoulder and climb the stairs side by side. They go to pack the essentials without another word. It takes the wind out of Kate's sails.

It makes her burn—the assumption that of course she'll stay at the loft. Of course they'll be together. Because she doesn't assume, however close they've grown. However they show her that she's family day in and day out. _Still,_ she doesn't assume, and this is how she fell in love with him. This reflexive generosity. The openness and care they all turn on the world.

She drifts back to the study, abuzz with too much energy. Too much fight and nothing to do with it. She should dismantle the board. Pack up the sheets to take with her.

Ryan has already snapped careful photos on an outdated digital camera. They'll deal with them offline— _careful as they need to be_ —but she should take these, too, if only to put the room to rights. There are people who look after the house and it's not . . . she should pack it away.

Something stays her hand, though. It feels more like surrender, and she's already asking them to leave the place that's done so much for them. The place filled with things he left unfinished.

She paces instead. The length of the board. The width of the room. She takes in Ryan's handwriting. Her own and the neat labels he's placed next to things transcribed from their conversation. _L_ _–_ _B_ _–_ _E_ _–_ _R._ She likes it. The idea and the effect. It's more like a real board at the precinct, somehow. It captures something of the process. Not just facts and speculation, but their different voices. Shades of meaning in the different ways they see the same things.

She likes it even though he's missing. Even though that hurts more than mostly blank pages and the gaps between them. There are more than there should be, and that's not just the case itself. The fact that they're dealing mostly in negatives. It's _him._ It's the absurd little details she's missing. Connections. True things and the stuff he makes up out of whole cloth. The pathos and intrigue. The way evidence becomes a story.

She takes up the pen again. She marks in one tentative _C,_ then another and another. She fills them in next to things she knows from. After Paris. After Ted Rollins. But next to other things, too. Her biggest logical leaps. Intuition that she'd never allow on a precinct board, but it's here. Fixed on paper because she needs it to be. Because he's missing.

"Not easy to keep him quiet, is it?"

Kate nearly jumps out of her skin, even though Alexis's voice is soft. Even though she's hanging back in the doorway. The pen clatters to the floor. She stoops for it, buying time. She hadn't meant for Alexis to see this. Martha either, really, but Martha has her own ideas, and she's been in this from the beginning. Alexis, though . . . Kate doesn't know how it might take her. Her father's would-be murder laid out like this.

"Not easy." She comes up with the pen and uncertain smile. "It's good, though. We've always been a good team. Are you and Martha just about ready?"

Alexis nods. "Gram's just making calls the housekeeper and the caretaker."

She moves closer to board. Careful, rather than hesitant. Her fingers rise to brush the sheet with his name on it. Kate holds her breath, but she moves on almost immediately. Her hand lingers at the blue square and there's something—a shadow crosses her face that Kate doesn't think she'd have registered a week ago—but she moves on.

It's the next sheet over she stops in front of. _UNIDENTIFIED MALE_ across the top in black marker and most of the page is blank. A few facts about the accident. A few lines of speculation. That's it.

"The man—the body in the car?" Alexis looks over her shoulder and Kate nods. She opens her mouth to explain. To tell her that there was nothing for the longest time. That she couldn't bring herself to write _VICTIM_ on the page. That she doesn't like what that says about her, but Alexis goes on. "Who is . . . who was he?"

"We don't know, exactly." Kate hangs her head. Something unpleasant wriggles in her belly when she thinks how many times she's asked Lanie the same question. How she's pressed her and come at her from every direction, even though she knows how impossible it is. How Lanie has turned herself inside out trying to find something anyway. "A man roughly your dad's build and age. Similar enough to pass as him in an open and shut case. The man who . . . caused the accident, most likely."

There's more, but Alexis doesn't need to know that. Lanie's given her more about what Cross must have done to the body—to the car and the scene itself—after the fact. It's all slapdash. Unsophisticated, but functional. Good enough to reinforce what the plan must have been in the first place: To make it look like a one-car crash. A distracted driver, speeding on an isolated stretch of road. No evidence of foul play. No reason to suspect it.

"But who _is_ he? What did he _want_?" Alexis shakes her head, her brows drawing together. It's curiosity, though. She's distant from it somehow. Like it's something she's reading. A story she's working out. Kate pictures the hundred times she must have done this with her father. The hundred stories they've told together. "Last year . . . Paris. They took Sara so it would be news . . . so he'd come." She stabs the next page over angrily. _HUNT/CROSS_. Not so much distance there. "Was that what he wanted?"

Kate swallows. She won't lie to her. It's not even that she wants to lie, but it's hard to give voice to. It's like that first awful moment again. The phone ringing and the realization that the waiting wouldn't end with her slamming her fists against the solid expanse of his chest. Tearing into him for _scaring_ her like that.

"It's possible that he meant . . . that he worked for someone who wanted your father as leverage." Kate watches her own knuckles go white around the pen. "At first . . . when we found out it wasn't him in the car . . . that's what we assumed. _I_ assumed."

"But they weren't trying to take him." Pale fingers drift back to trace the outline of the small blue square. "They were trying to kill him. Trying to make it look like an accident."

"That's . . ." Kate reaches out for the board, but her hand falls away. She wants to snatch the words up. She wants to burn them. "Given my run-in at the diner, it seems likely that's what they wanted, and Cross just . . . hijacked the plan."

"He killed the man who wanted to kill my dad."

Kate nods. A helpless gesture that Alexis can't even see. She's facing the board. Studying it.

"Why was he there?" Alexis turns to her. She's somewhere in between now. Somewhere halfway between needing to know for herself and just needing to _know._ Needing the story. "My dad's . . . if it wasn't about him . . . if it was supposed to just look like an accident, why was he even there?"

"The wedding." It's immediate. Matter of fact at first, and something Kate thinks she already knew—that they all must have assumed, but they hadn't gotten around to that part yet. She moves to add it to the board, but she's about to pack it up, isn't she?

And anyway, she's not sure where it goes. They've focused on how the accident played out. Where Cross would have gone from there.

 _Why now?_ That's still nagging at her. Why Cross is suddenly trying to shut her down when they're nowhere. They've gotten nowhere, haven't they?

She should know better, though. _Why then_? That's where the story starts, and they should all know better. The story matters. Rising action. Why Cross was there. Why that time and place.

The pen hovers over the board. The words travel up and tumble of out of her mouth. "He would have known about the wedding. He would have wanted to be . . ."

She's thinking out loud. She trails off too late. She remembers Castle's face. Cold fury. A rare moment in the middle-of-the-night, gone almost as soon as it had begun. _He had a wall. Pictures of her. Years and years. Like a fucking stalker._ But he never told her. Alexis. It's another thing he tried to spare her. Gone now. Another thing gone.

"He watches us." Alexis looks to her for confirmation, but she already knows. It's a statement, and there's nothing for it. Kate nods. It's bad enough, but Alexis moves on. A single grimace of disgust and she moves on. "So it was a coincidence? He just . . . happened to be there?"

" _He_ happened to be there." Kate says thoughtfully. She taps the torn sheet. Her hand moves down. She traces the _A_ in _ACCIDENT._ She pictures it. Cross keeping eyes on Castle. Wondering if the wedding would even come off. His version of fatherhood. "But the accident . . . that was planned. Cross was just working from their play book. Something that wouldn't raise any questions. A county police department and a small-town ME's office."

"And you in your wedding dress." It's soft. Pained. Alexis turns swiftly toward Kate. She's horrified. Just catching up with her own words. She reaches out to touch her arm. "Kate, I'm sorry . . ."

"No." She steels herself. Makes herself hard, even though it's awful. Another moment she never wants to relive. "No, you're right. They wanted this out of the city. They wanted us all as far out of the picture as possible, but the accident itself had to be big news. Me in my wedding dress . . ."

"But the wedding was _supposed_ to be in Manhattan." Her pale skin lightens another shade. "You don't think they . . ."

Kate's stomach twists. All the air goes out of the room for a long, long heartbeat, and the walls lean in. She shakes her head against it, though. She doesn't have time for conspiracies around every corner.

"Page six." Saying it out loud helps. It makes sense, and she presses down hard on her own paranoia. She fights her way clear of it. "The fan sites. There were a dozen stories once we lost the venue. And they would have been watching. Looking for an opportunity. Mostly likely they heard . . ."

"They . . ." Alexis cuts in. Her hand comes to rest on the same sheet again. _UNIDENTIFIED MALE._

"They," Kate repeats.

It's like the word is completely new on her tongue, but it's jangling in her head. Echoes of the last few minutes sounding out in the empty space but she doesn't know why. Not yet.

 _Nothing._ There's too much nothing.

That's Cross's MO. She pulls the sheet with his name from the board.

She thinks about Paris. Roger Henson's body. Ted Rollins and the way Cross carried him from Coney Island to his own shower. Destroying evidence, but calling 911, too. She thinks about his smug smile.

_Turn on the news._

A high-profile shootout and a chase ending in the river. Blaine's weapon on the library floor, but not his body.

Something and nothing in a carefully alternating pattern. He only leaves evidence when he wants someone to find it. When it shuts down questions or leaves her asking the wrong ones.

The X-ray was a fluke. He knew about Castle's knee, but not his hand. But it's more than that. It's Cross working under pressure. Cross without home field advantage. Without whatever back up he'd usually call, however "outside" he pretends to be.

The accident wasn't _his_ nothing. It was theirs. And it wasn't the work of one man. _They._

"Kate?" Alexis sounds worried.

Kate turns and finds herself far from the board clutching the torn sheet. She wonders how long it's been. How long she's been pacing. Making her wait.

" _They,_ " she says again. A laugh this time. She holds up the page. "Cross just happened to be there. He was improvising. But him . . ." She strides back to the board. _UNIDENTIFIED MALE._ She tugs at the sheet. The clip holds on to the corner and the heavy sheet tears away most of the _U._ A matched set with the one already in her hand. "Staging an accident . . . making sure the job got done and fixing it so no one would ask questions. That's not something you do alone."

"He had a partner." Alexis's eyes are wide.

"He had a partner." Kate feels a grin twisting at her lips. "And that's not nothing."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Again, thanks for reading and leaving feedback.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She's grateful to have the two of them with her. That they'd dropped everything without a word and driven halfway from the city to pick her up, engine running at the back door of a no-name restaurant, and no one's acting like this is crazy, even though it might be. It might completely crazy, hoping to find something _here_. Somewhere to start this long after the fact."

It's not that she didn't know about it. Them. The shrines.

Weeks on, it still catches her unawares. A news item flashing across the television and sudden silence in the bullpen. His headshot staring up from a folded paper on the subway, side-by-side with a frame crowded with flowers and stuffed animals. Hardbacks and paperbacks. An array of strange offerings. A tearful woman standing by, as often as not, slightly out of focus and clutching a book to her chest so his name shows just right.

She knows about them. She knows the staff at the loft have been diligent in dealing with the things that show up in the dead of night. That clearing the sidewalk is still a daily chore at the precinct, though things have tapered off now. There, at least.

It comes in waves. When there's a pulse of publicity for the books. _Wild Storm_ came out on schedule, and the next Nikki book is around the corner. It's not a story without the accident, though. Author Richard Castle's last works.

They had a nicely worded note from Gina about all that. About the shrine outside Black Pawn's offices. It's the biggest, of course. The most elaborate and well maintained. Gina had said they "curate," but they think it's appropriate to let it stand.

 _Appropriate_.

Kate had gotten stuck on the word. Repeating it flatly with the note in her hand and the syllables strange in her mouth.

" _Curate_ ," _darling_. Martha had managed a laugh. Wrapped an arm around her and plucked the note in deft fingers to hold it high. _What do you suppose_ that _means? Keeping the lingerie to a minimum?_

The thought had even Kate smiling. Eventually, anyway. Lingerie and God knows what else. He'd love that.

She should have expected one here, too. A roadside shrine.

The accident was news on its own, after all. She has hazy memories of maps from the first few days. An arrow pointing to the general vicinity of the house and a pointer tracing the last leg of the journey. The route he never traveled.

It wasn't just the entertainment shows, either. It had all been enough of a spectacle to go national for a while at least. Three hundred people bussed in from the city and her in her wedding dress.

She should have known, but she's grateful for Esposito's tight, disbelieving _What the hell_? For the way he stalks away from it and the fact that Lanie offers nothing more than a squeeze on her shoulder before she draws her further away from the roadside. She's grateful there's not really time to look.

"Come on, honey. We're losing light."

She's grateful to have the two of them with her. That they'd dropped everything without a word and driven halfway from the city to pick her up, engine running at the back door of a no-name restaurant, and no one's acting like this is crazy, even though it might be. It might completely crazy, hoping to find something _here_. Somewhere to start this long after the fact.

But he would have had a partner. The man in the car who isn't Castle. And that means a second murder.

Cross wouldn't have left him alive. He couldn't have. She knows the kind of plan it must have been. She knows its moving parts now, and the irony is she learned it from him. How it must have worked.

_FC means final communication. All links have been severed._

Whoever was calling the shots would have simply waited for the news, and there was plenty of that. _Tragic Wedding-Day Crash: Best-Selling Author Dead._

No one would be looking for them. Not the kind of people who'd take on a job like this. Cross must have counted on that.

_Perception is everything._

But Cross was improvising, and she's looking now. There's a second murder and this is what she does. What _they_ do.

She follows Lanie's careful steps. She doesn't like this. It feels . . . vulnerable. She wishes Ryan were here. She's grateful to him for seeing Martha and Alexis safe home to the loft, and it's not like one more body would make the difference. But she'd feel better with them all her back. Their team.

The sharp descent from the shoulder hides them from the road. It's something, at least. It's early yet, but Sundays see a regular stream of traffic at the height of the summer season.

She's drawn immediately to the site of the fire. It's a massive swath. Black earth rich from the burning and a collar of trampled down vegetation still obvious after an unusually cool few weeks. Rain came heavy in short bursts, then disappeared. It's lousy for preserving evidence, but they have to try, and she doesn't want to let the sun set on it again now that the picture is starting to come together.

This isn't where they'll find it, though. If there's even anything to find, it won't be right here. The car—the site itself—is a radius of calculated nothing. Once upon a time, there was the car, the body, and enough breadcrumbs to lead to the obvious conclusion. Now there's nothing but scorched earth.

Esposito has already moved on. Lanie follows, casting uncertain looks over her shoulder when Kate stops. She's rooted to the spot, though, her toes just touching the blackened edge for a moment. She beats it back. The urge to drop to her knees and scour the ground.

Esposito and Ryan did what they could right after. _Everything_ they could, and she remembers whispers about ruined tuxes. About Gates looking the other way in the days immediately after that. The days when she was busy falling apart.

She takes one moment and a long breath. It's time wasted to second guess them. An impossible amount of ground to cover as it is.

She lets it go. The breath and the urge. She turns and jogs the hundred yards or so to catch up with Esposito and Lanie. They're stopped now, too. Esposito looks up the road then turns back. Considering.

"Anything?" Kate catches Lanie's eye. She gives her friend a nod to show she's ok, and she is. It's a crime scene. There's work to do, and she's ok as she's going to be until they get some movement on this.

Esposito shakes his head. "Not sure where to start."

"The site bugs me," Kate says suddenly.

It does. The embankment is steep and the dry creek bed is reasonably shielded from the road. But it's right off a park-like stretch flanking the two-lane highway. The three of them are standing in the last decently isolated spot before the landscape gives way to manicured lawns and low concrete walls that clearly require upkeep. And upkeep means people.

Esposito sees it, too. "Private estates and pastureland back that way." He gestures back the way they came. The other side of the shrine. "Sharp curve and a narrow shoulder. That's the spot I would have picked."

"So Cross . . . interferes." Kate squints up at the road. "And the car goes off the road further along than originally planned."

"Gives him less cover and less time." Esposito hauls himself a few steps up slope. "Don't like the other side of the road for much of anything. Tall grass. Better lit most of the day. Not as many trees."

"Slopes down toward the road, too." Kate joins him, skidding on the gravel. She follows his line of sight to the highway's vanishing point. It feels impossible. Dense underbrush giving way to forest. Neat, low fences breaking the monotony. But one side of the road is half as impossible. "We stick to this side. And focus back that way first. Cuts down our area. Lanie?"

"Back this way." She nods as the two of them skid back down the slope and fall in step beside her. "It's where I'd go if I had a body to dump."

"Good to know." Esposito grins and bumps her shoulder.

Lanie pushes him off, but she's grinning, too. They've gotten closer, Kate realizes. There's warmth between them and sharp edges softened by this. By loss and grief and the kind of grim reality Lanie had lectured _her_ about once upon a time.

_They thought they had all the time in the world. But nobody does._

Kate falls back a step or two as the creek bed narrows. She lets them go on ahead, side by side with the backs of their hands brushing.

 _Told you so_.

She can practically feel his breath on the back of her neck. He'd had grand plans for match-making at the wedding. Bouquets and garters and plenty of alcohol.

_The garter thing is not happening, Castle._

_Kate. They're our best friends. Don't you want them to be happy?_

_Why do I get the feeling this has a lot less to do with Lanie and Esposito's eternal happiness and more to do with the adolescent thrill of getting your hands up my skirt in public?_

_That sounds like a yes to the garter thing, Beckett._

He'd made it into a game. He must have bought a dozen, each fluffier and lacier than the last. He'd left them in her desk and under her pillow. Around her coffee mug one morning with a badly photoshopped picture of Lanie and Esposito kissing tucked under the band.

_It's a wedding, Castle. Esposito may bolt. Then what?_

_Not a chance, Beckett. He's seen the dress. I saw to that. Lanie_ _in that dress? My plan is foolproof._

He'd gone on long enough about _that_ particular subject to get himself hit. A solid back of the hand to his midsection that he'd grinned all the way through. And it's like he's here. Like he's still grinning.

 _Told you_.

It quickens her steps. Longing for him. Missing him fiercely, but it brings solidity, too. More family at her back. Shelter in this terrible place, and the light feels like it might last long enough for them to find something.

"Here." Esposito stops. He and Lanie turn together and Kate nods. It's the farthest outward thrust of the road over the creek bed. The shoulder narrows to practically nothing and it's almost a sheer drop. Only ten feet or so, but enough to flip a car end over end. Enough for flames to lick high enough to be visible from the road. Eventually. Not right away.

"Here," Kate echoes. "Fan out. Keep sight of each other."

She starts out at a forty-five degree angle from Lanie, working toward the crash site. Careful, even paces with her eyes fixed on the ground. It's soothing. Methodical and meditative to have work to do. Her mind clears. It narrows to this. The natural pattern stamps itself on her field of vision. The shading of silt and gravel. Smooth cobbles strewn at irregular intervals and the verdant rings of moss where they sink heavily into the earth.

There's a low rise on the far side of the bed. Her trajectory takes her across on an oblique angle, skirting the thick, dark green vegetation for a while. Everything looks alien at the boundary. One type of landscape giving way to another, and everything is different enough that it looks like it might be something. She slows. Takes a minute to let herself see the whole. A new pattern coming into play.

He chatters at the back of her mind. Glimpses of him in that ridiculous camouflage get up, thrumming with excitement. Whacking at the trees with a stick and dead certain Bigfoot would be lurking around the next tree or the next. It centers her now, though it drove her absolutely insane at the time.

She fishes a maglite from her pocket. Slows again to let her eyes adjust and find the right angle for the light. She settles it at hip level. It glints off something. Silver piercing the gloom and she doesn't believe it. Not at first. She closes her eyes. Breathes. But it's still there when she opens them again.

She stoops, afraid to touch it. Afraid she's destroying something even now, but it's alone, only loosely embedded in the dirt. She snaps a picture with her phone anyway before she fishes out gloves and digs it out. She covers her palm with the tail of her shirt and sets it carefully on the cloth. It's chrome. Good for prints if her hunch is right, though its doubtful they'd withstand weeks of weather. Doubtful that prints will get them anywhere with the kind of people they're dealing with. She's careful anyway. She knocks dirt from the top, tapping and blowing until she's cleared it.

"Yes," she hisses between her teeth as the familiar logo comes into focus.

It's a choke knob, almost identical to the one from her own bike. She sets the cylinder back into its divot and swings the light in a tight arc, back and forth. There's a scatter of possibilities. A few things she recognizes now that she has a frame of reference. Wheel bearings and a jagged piece of red glass from a turn signal lens. Something that might be a bent piece of clutch plate.

She leaves things in place, brushing the dirt aside here and there. She finds a sturdy enough branch and draws a circle in the dirt around the concentration of pieces, leaving a few generous inches of buffer. She snaps another picture and turns to pace out the distance back to the creek bed.

She's moving cobbles and planting a branch as a marker when she hears her name. A sharp report. Lanie first, then Esposito. A booming echo.

She knocks the cobbles with her foot for good measure and sets out at a jog. Esposito is already there, arms raised to draw her attention.

"She's got something," he says. It's quiet. Intense. "You?"

"Wrecked bike. Pieces of it anyway. Cross's most likely. Most likely trashed it so he could take the other vehicle." Esposito nods and flashes her a tight smile. It's one thing answered, anyway. Probably answered. "Lanie?" Kate gestures impatiently toward the trees. The days are still long, but the sun moves too swiftly across the sky and she doesn't like Lanie being out of sight.

He turns and leads her forward. There's a path of sorts. Trampled undergrowth that's just now rebounding and snapped branches from the waist up. Something that twists and doubles back.

She catches a glimpse of Lanie every once in a while. Her own light swinging low over the ground and the bright flash of her shirt through the green. She's on her knees when they push through the last stand of trees, thicker than anything they've shouldered through so far, but it opens into a kind of clearing. A thinning out anyway.

"Lanie?" Kate's throat is tight as Lanie raises a gloved hand. She holds up something that doesn't quite take up the whole of her palm. It's discolored. There's dirt clinging to it, ingrained in the porous surface, but something else. Lurid staining. Blood. Blood soaked into bone. "Human?" Her mouth comes up with the word before her mind really grasps it what she's seeing.

Lanie nods. "Calcaneus. Heel bone. Definitely human."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading and leaving feedback.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Brady keeps her in the loop. Daily updates, and he's always kind. He thinks this is just about closure, though. That she's looking for a murder—something to solve. He's kind about it but she knows how it must look in pieces like this. A series of coincidences stitched together by grief into something that isn't there."

* * *

She sleeps in the guest room now. She starts her nights out there, anyway. Mostly.

It's nothing to do with Martha and Alexis. Of course it's not. They don't say anything, though she knows they think it's strange. It _is_ strange, and she knows they worry. That if they were any less kind they'd be exasperated with the sharp angles of her. With how she forgets and all the ways she _acts_ like a guest.

But the truth is she's trying to settle. She's trying to be better now that they're home, and his room— _their_ room is too much. She hasn't slept there since the accident. In the city—here—she hasn't really marked the difference between day and night in any particular way.

She wanders. She paces or tries to read sometimes. In the last couple weeks she's worked the case. It feels like forever, but it's hardly been any time at all and since she said the words out loud. Since they told Alexis. It's hardly been any time at all, and she's trying to settle into this. All the things she's never been to anyone. A grown daughter with a mother to lean on. A kind of mother to a grown woman who's never had one. A not-quite widow by day and _this_ by night.

She's trying hard to be better now that they're home, but it's just more of the same. More of the in between her life has been since the accident. She sinks down wherever she is when exhaustion finally takes her. She closes her eyes for a while, but that's not fair to them either. She doesn't want them happening upon her in a heap in random corners of the loft. She doesn't want them to worry about her of all things.

So she'd tried. She'd thought she'd try now that they're home, because anything else would be too weird. But it's too much. She knew the minute she stood on the threshold, clinging to the bookcases and seriously contemplating it for the first time. Crawling into their bed alone. It's too much.

Their room here is absolutely neat. No books waiting by the bedside. No glasses or change or crumpled receipts on the dresser or the nightstand. Nothing in the hamper and fresh sheets on the bed. Nothing at all with his scent still on it, and she wishes she'd thought to bring his robe home.

It's the exact opposite of their room in the Hamptons, because they were supposed to be gone, and he's strange about that. For a man who's nine-tenths chaos, he's strange about it.

She remembers the first glimpse of it she'd gotten. Him springing out of bed, suddenly and completely awake and moving. Wholly unlike him. Wholly unlike anything she'd known of him in those first few weeks. He'd thrown her clothes at her, muttering testily, as if he hadn't been the one to peel them off. To cast them aside and tug her urgently to the bed too few hours before.

_What the hell, Castle?_

_Tuesday. It's late._

He'd yanked the clothes away from her then. An afterthought and a hurried, apologetic kiss as he folded them himself.

_Sorry. Housekeeper. I lost track of the days._

He'd tried for something reproachful. A look down his nose, like she was to blame for the fact that they'd spent most of their time horizontal those first few weeks. But he'd only come up with a grin, wide and joyful.

_Sorry. She'll be here soon._

She'd launched herself stubbornly back on to the pillows, hiding a smile at the sight of him trying to hop into his boxers and straighten the things on the dresser at the same time. Wondering where, exactly, he might put her now neatly folded clothes.

_You clean for the housekeeper?_

The look he'd shot her was as close to baleful as a man only half in his underwear was likely to get.

_Yes, Beckett. I clean for the housekeeper. Only sociopaths don't clean for the housekeeper._

It was that times a hundred right before the wedding. They were supposed to be gone. Straight from the wedding to the honeymoon, and he'd used it as an excuse to delay endlessly. He'd sneak off from the pile of books he had to sign and straighten the medicine cabinet instead. He'd arrange and rearrange vacuum sealed bags of winter sweaters and check behind every possible piece of furniture for stray socks and things, but he never quite managed to get to the thank you notes he was supposed to be tackling.

_I want to be able to just fall into bed when we get back. Everything neat so we don't have to think about anything_. _We can just be home._

She wants that now for when they find him. She wants to fall into bed with him. She wants to just be home.

So she starts her nights out in the guest room. She still doesn't sleep much. Less now, because she's always waiting. Trying to work the case and expecting the phone to ring. She's always waiting for there to be a break.

"Not nothing" has become too little in the few days that have passed since she braved the roadside shrine. She burns with impatience. With the need to _do,_ but it's not her case. It's not even Brady's case, though he's been helping where he can. Helping in ways he probably shouldn't.

He's kept their names out of it. Written the tip off to high-profile weekenders chasing a dog when he made the call to the neighboring police chief. It's not a stretch. The tiny village departments specialize in discreet, and no one's in a hurry to let the news of a body in the woods leak.

But it amounts to _their_ plan all over again. The man in the car and his partner. What's left of his partner, and a small town ME's office. It amounts to silence. Ironic.

Brady keeps her in the loop. Daily updates, and he's always kind. He thinks this is just about closure, though. That she's looking for a murder—something to solve. He's kind about it but she knows how it must look in pieces like this. A series of coincidences stitched together by grief into something that isn't there.

He doesn't know about the body in the car or Cross or the rest of the unbelievable story. He can't know.

She tells herself it's for the best, how quiet he's helped her keep things, because at least there's no new danger. For them or for Castle. On nights like this, with the TV on mute for some kind of company, she tells herself it's for the best until the sun comes up.

"Has inspiration struck, darling?"

Kate whirls around. Martha pads into the office, still tying the belt of her robe. She waves off the conversation. The back and forth of apology and denial. She drops into one of the leather chairs and scans the board.

What they call it the board for lack of a better word. It's more than a little silly. Twine strung from corner to corner along the back wall of his office. Clothespins and binder clips and some things stuck directly to the wall. Directly, defiantly stuck to the flat panel, because he's always been a brat about his fancy storyboard software, and she's not about to start using it now.

"No inspiration." Kate hangs her head. "Nothing new."

She'd been so hopeful. They'd all been so hopeful. There's a _body._ Parts of one, anyway, and a wrecked motorcycle. Cross must have gotten the bike from _somewhere,_ and the body in the woods has to be _someone,_ yet here they are. Stuck in a new round of not-quite-nothing.

Soil analysis confirms the remains have been in the ground anywhere from one to four months. The village PD recovered a scatter of foot bones and much of a badly fragmented leg. The size suggests male, and the wide scatter indicates a shallow grave and heavy scavenger activity. That's not surprising after the harsh winter, but Lanie thinks Cross was probably counting on it. An unusual amount of blood in the soil to help things along. More improvisation and Kate skips lightly over those particular details with Martha and Alexis.

It bolsters their theory, at least. Their rendition of how things went down in the aftermath. Cross would have had two bodies and a bike to ditch in short order. One in the car—their unidentified male—and one in the woods. But there's no DNA to speak of. No clothes or convenient medical devices, but there wouldn't be. Men like this—like Cross and the people who want him dead—don't have fingerprints or DNA on file. Men like this don't exist.

There's nothing to identify the bike, either. Nothing beyond make, model, and year. A Harley a lot like hers, though it's newer, and that pisses her off more than it should. There's another vehicle somewhere. The one meant to run Castle off the road in the first place. The one he would have used to take Castle away.

They assume Cross has abandoned or wrecked it by now. Ryan and Esposito are doing what they can with that. They're casting a wide net. Tracking every report on the radar, but there's not so much as a tire track to narrow things down. They have no idea what they're looking for, let alone where they might find it.

"Nothing new," Kate says again.

"You had a call earlier." Martha's tone is gentle. She leaves it hanging.

Martha trusts her. They're done with secrets, and Kate knows it's not that. But there's more to tell than she realizes sometimes. Martha is a good sounding board. She and Alexis both are. It's valuable. The roughly sketched things that tumble out of their mouths. Halting, half-formed things that tumble from her own. They make their way on to the board, a bold _C_ in the margin. It's valuable, but there's really nothing to keep Martha up with tonight.

"Just Brady. Just checking in. Nothing new." Kate tries for a smile. Something she hopes is reassuring enough to send Martha back to bed, but no such luck.

"And yet, here you are." She settles back in the chair and gestures at the TV. Some middle-of-the-night rerun of some entertainment show. More than a little surreal with the silent plastic people half-covered by paper and post-it notes. "And _not_ for the quality 's on your mind, Katherine?"

"The same." She turns her back on the board and rolls against the tension in her shoulders. "Trying to put the pieces together. Think of some other way Cross might have tripped up. Trying not to waste time wondering where we'd be if it were my case."

"Would you do things differently?" There's no accusation in it, just curiosity. "I mean, surely the NYPD has more resources."

"Not really." She's been at this too long. She should probably give up for the night. Make a show of heading up to the guest room and coax Martha along with her. She drops into the chair next to her instead. "I wish that mattered. Lanie's soil analysis came back a little faster, and we ordered a few more in-depth tests, but . . . having to keep it just to the four of us—doing it off the books—there's not a lot I _could_ do differently, even if it were mine." She lets her eyes fall closed.

Martha reaches for her hand. Kate turns her palm up. There's tension in her grasp. Something Martha isn't saying.

"Martha. I don't have the energy for subtext tonight." She turns her head cracks an eye open.

"Fortunate, given that I'm hopeless at it, dear," Martha says drily. She's covering, though. She's hesitant. "We haven't heard from . . . our nemesis?"

Kate sits up. "Cross? Of course not. Martha, I would have told you . . ."

"Oh, darling, I know." She looks chastened. Tired and defeated. "I know. And I'm glad. Of course I'm glad."

"But . . ." Kate slumps into the chair again. She squeezes Martha's fingers and lets them slip free. "It means we're cold. He's not worried. It's not _necessary_ for him to bother with me."

"Isn't that . . . doesn't it seem odd?" Martha's eyes fix on the board. On one of the too many questions they still don't have an answer for _Why now?_ "I mean, at the time, it was everything—knowing that body in the car wasn't Richard's. For you and me and Alexis . . . "

". . . but it's not like I could have opened an investigation with it." Kate nods. It bothers her, too. It's not the first time she's turned the disconnect over in her mind. "Not with an x-ray. Not when the AG's office would have denied all knowledge. Assuming they didn't just arrest everyone involved."

"Still. It was enough to bring him out of the woodwork."

Martha's mouth twists. She's more and more vocal about her distaste for Cross. It's funny by day. _She's_ funny. Razor sharp about him. But the scars show by night. She blames herself. Kate knows the signs too well.

"I should've been more careful. AG's office is how I found out Anderson Cross was wanted by the CIA in the first place." Kate shrugs. It's the simplest explanation, but it _itches_. It's unconvincing, and the itch is something more than just dead-of-night paranoia. "Assuming that wasn't a cover story . . . Either way, I should have known better than to lean on McCord like that. He has to have eyes and ears inside a dozen federal agencies."

"But he hasn't heard the buzz from our charming Village Police Department?" Martha looks dubious, and rightly so.

"He's heard." She hates saying it out loud, but it's true. He has to know. About the body. About the bike. He must, and she knows what the silence must mean. She grits her teeth. "He just . . . doesn't care. We don't worry him."

"And why is that?" Martha raises her hands—a sweeping gesture at the board. "Another accident—a _body_ —and all of it along the same stretch of road? It's a hell of a story, dear."

"Hell of a story no one would believe." Kate scrubs at her eyes. Any other night she'd close them right here. She'd reach for a different kind of nothing for a while. "He's still running the game. Even if I could tell Brady or Gates or . . . someone, they'd never believe it."

"No, dear. I don't suppose anyone like that would believe it."

There's something odd in her tone. Something absent that makes Kate look up. Martha's attention is fixed on the TV. Kate follows her gaze to the flat panel. It's the tail end of whatever mindless show's been on. The lead-in to something new. Another piece on him. The cover of _Wild Storm_ gives way to his book-jacket picture. She hates it. Marketing always goes for the empty ones that hardly look like him at all, but it hits her solid in the ribs. It always does.

Martha gropes on the coffee table for the remote. She hits the volume button a few times.

_. . . tragic and untimely death has resulted in unprecedented interest in the author and his work. Publisher Black Pawn projects record-breaking sales for Richard Castle's final two novels._

Kate takes the remote from her. She blindly fumbles for the mute button. Her heart pounds. "Martha . . ."

"Katherine, you said it yourself. He's running the game." Martha sits forward in her chair. "Why are we letting him?"

"Because it sounds crazy. _I_ sound crazy." She stares down at the carpet as if that can keep the world from shifting under her. "And he might . . . Cross might . . ."

"He might what?"

Martha asks quietly and Kate doesn't have an answer. She doesn't know what she's afraid of any more. She doesn't know what there _is_ to fear that doesn't already have her walking the floors night after night.

" _So long as Richard stays dead_ . . ." Kate murmurs, her mouth almost too dry to form the words. "That's the only card he has to play. He has no friends, no backup. The only way he he can keep Castle alive is if the world thinks he's already dead."Her voice sounds odd in her own ears. Level and dismissive, but the rest of her is alight. Crawling and tingling and new breath filling her lungs like she's standing on the edge of something. "But what if he's right? What if it _is_ the only way?"

"What if he is, darling?" Martha shakes her head. She's afraid. She's afraid, too, and somehow it steadies Kate to know. Martha is no fool. Alexis isn't. They all know this is life and death. "Richard would never choose this. He would _never_ settle for a life that kept him away from us forever."

Kate is silent. Stiller than she's ever been as if the next word—the next breath or flick of fingers—will have her falling. Will have them all falling, but it might be time for that. It might be well past time.

"Kate." Martha reaches for her hands. "I refuse to believe that the one person in all the world who can keep Richard safe is the same man who used him as bait. I don't think _you_ believe that, and Richard certainly wouldn't. He would never choose this. He'd choose his family, and it's his family he'd trust to keep him safe."

"He would. He's kind of an idiot." Kate laughs a little tearfully.

"Yes, darling, but he's _our_ idiot."

"How?" She looks to Martha, wide eyed. She's shaken. On edge and exhilarated. At a loss and out of her own body. She's been living with silence for so long.

"We find the right audience, kiddo." Martha holds her hands fast. Anchors her. "We do that and the story tells itself."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading and leaving feedback. Sorry this got a little long.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The outside world is hungrier now, and that's good for the plan. That _is_ the plan, even though she hates it so much of the time. Even though it goes against every professional instinct she has, the game is different now. They're not solving a murder, they're bringing him home. And to do that, they have to flush Cross out."
> 
> * * *

It's terrifying how little they have to do. How little _she_ has to do, in particular, because that's part of the plan. She keeps to the very edges of things. A palm extended toward the camera and a stern _No comment._

_We play to your strengths, Katherine._

Martha had gotten a taut, jangling laugh from everyone with that.

It's true, though. She does what she's done for years, and it fits the bill exactly. Dismissal she's long since mastered in perfect tension with how eager they are to get at her now. To get at all of them. Martha and Alexis, Ryan and Esposito. Even Lanie once in a while. They all have their shadows. Knots of followers with phones on their upturned palms like offerings.

_Any comment on . . ._

_We've had reports that . . ._

It's worse now than it was in the beginning. Then, it was story already ended. A tragedy even the 24-hour news cycle could only repeat so many times. Even still, she hardly has any memory of navigating this.

A buzzing swarm everywhere she goes. The follow her. They're already there, every corner she turns. They just appear, and it wasn't like that after the accident.

They call her Kate. A chorus of voices shouting it. Trailing behind her, her first name ringing out like they know her. They think they do. She's not Detective Beckett to them. She's not even Nikki Heat. She's the fiancée. The almost-widow. That's the legacy of the dress.

It's new to her. All of it feels practically new, and she knows what that must mean. She realizes now how good to her everyone was when she could hardly stand. The way they must have closed ranks around her and Alexis and Martha. Gates and the boys, of course. But Brady and the village PD. Gina and Paula, too. A host of people she's annoyed and aggravated and inconvenienced over the last year or more with her fierce insistence on privacy. They all came together to bring them through it.

But the outside world is hungrier now, and that's good for the plan. That _is_ the plan, even though she hates it so much of the time. Even though it goes against every professional instinct she has, the game is different now. They're not solving a murder, they're bringing him home. And to do that, they have to flush Cross out. They have to take away the one thing he wants: Silence. The end of any attention paid to Richard Castle and his tragic wedding day accident.

So they let things slip. One of them says something loud enough to hear on the far side of the tape, another tips the screen of their phone just so and holds it up just a little too long. It's nothing, really. All the bits and pieces—if this were an investigation, it would be less than nothing. But it isn't _just_ an investigation any more. It's a whole new game.

It's almost too easy to leave a question hanging. Someone asks it for them, then everyone asks it. Every outlet has its spin. His picture is everywhere. His name is everywhere, and it's not just PR. It's not just idle conversation like it has been.

It makes for a better story. Developments. Unanswered questions. They capture the imagination far better than tragedy alone. That's how he'd explain it, and it's true. The way it unfolds. All the intrigue. Even the messy threads of plot that range from plausible enough she should have thought of it to completely absurd. It's never dull, and it leaves the whole world wanting more.

She should have thought of it sooner. The fact that what's true and what's not doesn't matter a bit in this particular game. What they've nudged out into the ether, and what springs up all on its own, it all has equal weight out here. Out in the world, and the official story—the one Cross is counting on—has nothing on this one. A question here, a denial there, and the plot inches forward. It's a compelling work in progress. That's what matters.

So she keeps her eyes front and does what she's always done. _No comment_ , she says ,and every single one of them is more determined than ever to get to the bottom of things.

_Richard Castle_ _'_ _s family, friends, and business associates have been silent on these developments. But sources suggest . . ._

They all go about their business, and the swarm grows. Real cameramen, sometimes, rolling up in the occasional news van. A few old-school reporters with their notebooks and dented pocket recorders. They're not the heart of it, though. They're not why this works with frightening ease.

It's the bloggers and the big-name fans from the message boards who drive this. The constant conversation. It's fan sites and gossip feeds. Back and forth exchanges in every corner of social media, and the claims grow and grow. Bits and pieces of information that filter out and take on a life of their own.

_Did we say that?_

They ask each other a dozen times a day. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes they laugh until the tears come. Sometimes it's something awful and her heart stops beating until she realizes it's made up out of whole cloth.

They all have their shadows and their parts to play. Variations on how they've always coped anyway. It's scary how easy it is.

Esposito is belligerent. He slips details into insults and threats. He gets right up to the recorder. Right up to the camera, and Ryan pulls him away. He underscores every tidbit as he talks his partner down. As he placates and makes peace, all the while making sure whoever it is understands why they don't want any talk about accidents and investigations getting back to their colleague and her family. How the fact that the village PD has been asking questions about late model Harleys and working down a list of abandoned vehicles has nothing at all to do with Mr. Castle's tragic accident along the same stretch of road.

Lanie flirts and turns the tables on them. She sweetly assures everyone the ME's office that handled the accident is perfectly competent. She drops statistics about murder in the small county and the fact that offices all over the country learn how to deal with resources stretched too thin. She finishes with a smile and her fan club grows.

Martha is the undisputed mistress of it all, of course. She rages. Advances toward the cameras with a towering _How dare you?_ on her lips as she folds Alexis in her arms, not quite shielding her from view. She demands privacy. Decency and respect for her son's family and everything they're _still_ going through after all this time.

Alexis gives Martha a run for her money. Kate hates the very idea of the media anywhere near her. To her credit, Martha does, too, but Alexis is adamant she can handle it. And she's good at it. Of course would be. She's lived so much of her life like this. Watching and learning to give a little every now and again to win her privacy most of the time.

She turns that on easily now. She's quiet. Stoic and impeccably sincere when she apologizes for them both. Herself and Martha. She turns and pleads with them over her shoulder. _For my grandmother_ _'_ _s sake. For Kate._ She begs them not to spread rumors that her father's death wasn't exactly what it looked like.

* * *

They're all better at this than Kate. Every one of them, but unfortunately she's the real curiosity, especially just now. She's off desk duty. A brief, brusque conversation with Gates that she appreciates more than she can say.

_It_ _'_ _s not necessary, Detective. Not if you_ _'_ _re not ready._

_I am, Sir. It_ _'_ _s time._

_And the media?_

_Nothing I can't handle._

Gates had started to say something. She's no fool, and it's not as if she could have missed it. The sudden uptick in everything. His name in the news and the buzz around the precinct. But she'd let it go in the end. A gruff nod and a sharp look and it was done.

Kate misses Montgomery. She still mourns him, and time and circumstance have done a lot to heal the wounds she never even had time to register before he gave his life for hers. But she's grateful that Gates gets this in a way Montgomery wouldn't have. Couldn't have. She's grateful that Gates understands what unquestioning confidence does for her. The way it straightens her shoulders and sends her out into the world with a clearer mind than she's known all these weeks. She has a job to do.

It's a mixed blessing, though. Being back. A complicated thing, because it's a new way to miss him. She's past thinking of it as a betrayal. Mostly she's past that, but it's a new gauntlet of sympathy to navigate and a new host of people who knew him. Scene techs and uniforms and business owners in the shadier neighborhoods who are usually jaded enough to barely glance over the tape as they walk to work. There's a whole cast of characters, and they miss him, too.

She's always known the way he is. How he thrives on interaction and he's always watching. He's always taking note of mannerisms and foibles. Interesting tics and and the kind of details that make a character step from the page, straight into the reader's world. He could strike up a conversation with a Trappist monk, and people like him as much as he likes people. She knows that. She's lived with it. Irritation bleeding into respect into gratitude, and finally—at long last—into the smile she doesn't have to hide because he's hers. He's _hers,_ and most of the time she loves that the world loves him.

She knows all that, but the sincerity of this catches her off guard every single day. The quiet stories people want to tell her. About his decency. His warmth and genuine desire to help. His sharp memory for their joys and sorrows and the way he'd always ask after them, even if it had been a long, long time between meetings. It catches her off guard, the realness of the loss for these people she only just recognizes a lot of the time.

It's a complicated thing, but the timing works for them, she supposes. There's just the usual suspects on the other side of the tape her first time out. The few old school reporters who still cover crime for the _Ledger_ and the local news outlets at first. The usual stringers, and a die-hard amateur blogger or two, but word gets out quickly that she's back. A photo tweeted by a bystander. Alexis forwards it.

It's a single dizzying moment for Kate. Looking down at herself stooped and peering over Lanie's shoulder, the two of them blocking the street view of the body. It's a glimpse of herself—this part of her she's only just getting back on her feet with—in not-quite-real time. She has to remind herself to breathe. She has to remind herself that it's good when the crowd starts to grow. A lot. _Quickly._ She has to remind herself this is the plan.

There's another text from Alexis. It steadies her. The fact that they're all in this.

_Good timing if you and Lanie are up for it. Stay off sites/Twitter, though._

Kate grits her teeth. She hates the plan a lot right now. Martha had tried to warn her it would be like this right from the beginning.

_Darling, it_ _'_ _s out there. The idea that the police are asking questions. You out from behind the desk_ _—_ _back running crime scenes? It_ _'_ _s a compelling image._

Kate had balked, though. She'd waved Martha away.

 _I'm Kate now._ She'd rolled her eyes and straightened her lapels in the hall mirror, smiling at the concern carving lines in Martha's face as she loomed over Kate's shoulder. _I'm just the fianceé._

Martha had pursed her lips at that, but she let it go. Held on a moment longer than usual and caught Kate's fingers as she made her way out the door.

 _There will be wine waiting, Katherine. I'll say no more, but there will be_ wine.

Kate closes her eyes. She'd thought it would be a while. She really had, but Martha isn't wrong. It's a compelling image, and the plan is the plan no matter how much she hates it. It's the one and only way they have to shake Cross. To take control of the game.

She flips her phone over again and taps out a reply to Alexis.

_We're on it. The dress is back?_

_You and the dress are back big time. Sparing you Gram's directorial notes._

Kate smiles at that. It's something tenuous, though. Something out of practice, judging from the double take Lanie does when she turns to face her. Kate gestures at the phone with a raise of her eyebrows. Lanie glances down at the back and forth for a brief moment. She drops smoothly into action. She makes a show of handing off their vic to the crime scene photographer for the moment and taking Kate aside.

Lanie's good at this. Kate has never been so grateful to have the woman on her side. She knows without looking where to position the two of them. Kate in profile, and they both know Martha would be proud. She knows just how to pitch her voice so the crowd pressing close to the tape overhears exactly what she wants. No more and no less.

Kate is too loud. She's awkward at all of it. Stilted, and she thinks of Castle shaking his head. She thinks about that stupid documentary.

_These cameras, they_ _'_ _re not going anywhere. They_ _'_ _re going to see something. I just want them to see what I see._

She feels his palm cupping her cheek and his fingers sweeping her hair behind her ear. She remembers the thousand nudges and pep talks and how the camera showed her the breathless way he looks at her. She misses him. She remembers what this is all for.

"Kate?" Lanie's game face drops. She reaches to touch Kate's shoulder, and there's nothing but concern in it.

"Fine. I'm fine," she murmurs back, and for once, it's exactly right. Exactly as though Lanie has just given her news that shakes her a little bit. She lets herself sag, then stiffens her spine. "I just thought we'd have something on the body by now."

Lanie's eyes widen. This a gamble. They've dealt in little things so far. Casual talk about vehicles and accidents. Innocent airing of plausible concerns anyone might have had about how the investigation was handled. But the body is another thing altogether. Two bodies, neither of them Castle's, and the world isn't asking how they know. It's not an investigation or a court of law. This is a different game entirely and it's time to make a move.

_The body._

It's something Kate knows that Martha has been trying to ease her toward. Something she's stayed stubbornly blind to, and suddenly here she is. Leaping.

 _Good timing,_ she thinks and Lanie nods as if she can hear. Her gaze skips rapidly to the tape and then back to Kate. They both feel it. A palpable shift. The stillness of a crowd listening, and all the while a silent, eager spark that jumps along the line.

"Honey." Lanie takes her hand. She lets her voice drop and it's like the world is leaning in. "You know I'd have gotten you up in the middle of the night."

"So there's nothing?" Kate lets her voice shake. She lets it dip lower still. It's easy enough.

"I'm sorry, Kate." Lanie notches her volume up, not quite imperceptibly. "There's nothing to connect the second body to him."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading. The end is relatively nigh.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "When it's dark, and the wounded places inside fill with fear that whispers that this is something awful she's dreamed up—something awful she's done to them all—she lays her head in Martha's lap without a word. She slips on to the couch at Alexis's side. She strokes the girl's hair as they watch the sun come up. The three of them tell the story to one another over and over and over again. They tell each other to hope."

It's a moment she knew was coming. They all knew, even though everyone has tiptoed around it with her. Even though she's tiptoed around it with Martha and Alexis in turn, trying to prepare them. Trying to prepare herself. She was a fool to think she had. That any of them could be ready for this.

_Coming home?_

Kate's phone lights up with the text from Alexis five seconds before everything goes crazy. She knows, though. Something in the restraint in those ten letters rings through her like a bell. Head to toe, she knows that it's coming. She knows it's happening now.

 _Of course,_ she thinks as she sets her desk to rights, eerily calm as the bullpen erupts around her. Busy, angry chatter that sinks immediately into an appalled hush punctuated by the occasional curse as someone new wanders in and catches a glimpse of the TV. She watches like it's a far-off scene while someone scrambles and comes up with the remote. The flat panel clicks off, but the crawl at the bottom lingers. The impact of it.

_Richard Castle alive?_

It's a pointless gesture, anyway. One screen going dark while her phone lights up over and over again now. Her desktop monitor is alive with a chain of notifications, one after the other like fireworks.

A blast radius opens up around her. Distance and averted eyes. Silent shock. A swell of sympathy.

 _Pity_.

The word blooms in her mind. It tugs at the corners of her mouth. Relief of all things. No one here believes it. Not for an instant, and that's good. It reads as some unimaginably cruel story. A hoax, that's all, and they're sorry for the pain it must cause her.

It's good. Exactly what they want right now. Chatter and speculation from the outside. Complete dismissal of the very possibility from within the ranks. Exactly the right balance to feed this particular fire.

She keeps her head down. She can't exactly be caught smiling. Not even this little, twisted thing. A paradox of a smile, but just as dangerous.

Breath rushes out of her when the elevator doors open and Esposito and Ryan spill out. They're surrounded immediately. A grim LT takes point within the seething mass. Plainclothes and uniforms and civilian staffers descending on the two of them. There are warnings. Not-quite-whispered demands for direction. For a plan of action.

That's more complicated for her. For all of them. It calls for gratitude. Silence when she wants to tell them all the truth. Backward reassurance that she's fine when there's no way she should be. And she's not, of course. She's not fine at all, even though she knows better than to hope. But there's knowing and there's _knowing._

There's a firm palm pressed to her own ribs. Expectation held in check, because there's something every minute of every day now, and it's almost never new. It's almost never something more than what they've put out there, and none of them has the energy. They make themselves numb to it. They have to.

But there's fingers curled around it in the dark, too. Sheltering that flame when this all seems impossible. When it's dark, and the wounded places inside fill with fear that whispers that this is something awful she's dreamed up—something awful she's done to them all—she lays her head in Martha's lap without a word. She slips on to the couch at Alexis's side. She strokes the girl's hair as they watch the sun come up. The three of them tell the story to one another over and over and over again. They tell each other to hope.

They know better and they don't. This is how they live now. Until they bring him home.

_Richard Castle alive?_

It's something entirely different, spelled out like that. Something entirely different in the mouths of strangers. But Ryan and Esposito have this. She knows. She breathes through the panic. They have their part and she has hers and the phone is warm in the palm of her hand.

_Coming home?_

She is. She needs them and they need her.

Her hands shake, though. They're slippery with sweat as she forces her attention away from the elevator and back to the phone. She fumbles back to her texts. She needs to let Alexis know it's ok, but she's clumsy. She curses as an errant swipe hits yet another pop up and she watches the post count click up and up and up on one of the fan sites. As threads propagate far too quickly for her to catch more than a glimpse here and there. _Hoax. Cover-up. Plot. Truth. The Real Story._ It happens with the unbelievable speed she's still not used to.

Ryan breaks away from the crowd before she can tear her eyes from the screen. He's by her side, and she registers Esposito in the distance. Short, sharp words and the knots break up. Everyone stumbles back to their business, casting glances back at her. _Pity_. That's good.

"Ryan?" Her voice is tight. All the control she can muster invested in two syllables, and there it is again. Hope kicking its way to the surface. The wild fancy it could be this easy.

Ryan shakes his head. "Speculation," he murmurs. "Just what we put out there."

It's nothing. Their doing, that's all. Exactly what they counted on happening once the words made it out there: _Second body._ It's devastating all the same. It's devastating for them all, every time, however careful they are. He squeezes her elbow once, and then it's business as usual.

"Yo, Beckett." Esposito saunters up. His tone is casual, but she sees the worry in his shoulders. In the deep lines around his mouth. "Anything new?"

She laughs. A shrill, nearly breathless explosion that leaves her a little weak. It turns heads. One or two people drift closer, but it's what they expect to see. Ryan and Esposito bearing her up. Gallows humor and a brave face.

She presses her palm to her desk. She grins at them both. One to the other, and she knows it's a little hard. A little bright-eyed and mad, but it's what she can manage. More than they'd ask under the circumstances.

"Nah," she says, and it almost sounds normal. "Nothing really. I was gonna knock off."

She taps the edge of her phone. They both glance at the message. Who it's from, and they trade barely perceptible nods all around.

Esposito rolls his eyes. "Fine. Guess we'll pick up the slack."

" _Again_ ," Ryan adds with a mock scowl as he turns back to his desk.

"Thanks," she murmurs, but they're busy already. Making a show of it, and glancing pointedly toward the elevator.

"Thanks," she says again to the air. To all of them, really. All these people ready to rally around her. To guard her from this however they can. To guard her family.

She says it again, distracted this time as she taps out her reply at last.

_Coming home._

* * *

It's just a few days later that he's everywhere. Not just a file photo or a headshot on a dust jacket. Not even the stiffly posed picture of the two of them that someone decided was their engagement photo. It's more than that now. Sightings filtering in. One and another, then dozens. It's _him_ everywhere, somewhere between literally and not quite.

This is harder still. Inevitable, and yet another thing they've braced for, but still the pain is unimaginable when it comes. That aching moment. Hope is bad enough, and the fall is worse. Every time, the fall is worse.

Like everything else, it unfolds and multiplies and spreads. It grows with unthinkable speed.

It's been three days. Four, maybe, since the first headline. Two and a half since it was everywhere. A statement of fact in some places. A question posed in others. Some mention it in passing, but more and more there are drawn-out explorations. Entire segments and long exchanges that trace everything from the wedding onward. Fact and fiction and that damned map that she hates.

Most of the bigger outlets shake their heads sadly over the hoax. A few are flat out tongue in cheek about it. Cruel when they drum up fans for interviews for no reason other than to poke fun at their fervor. Their passion for the mystery.

Emma Riggs' name surfaces briefly and disappears. Aaron Stokes has something to do with the swiftness of it. Kate's sure of that, but it's not really a good story. No one likes a crazed, desperate fan for this.

 _Misery. Yawn. So played out_.

That's the take on the message boards. They laugh over the stubborn, airtight logic of it. So him. That absolute insistence that life bends and bows and twists itself into the better story.

There's no shortage of those. Better stories. Things he'd get carried away with. Versions they get caught up in if they're not careful. And it's hard to be careful all the time. It's so hard.

A tiny corner of the world thinks it's him. A publicity stunt, and reactions range from impressed to angry. Alexis takes charge of those. She keeps track of most of the fan stuff anyway, but Kate can't bear the strange contours of this in particular. The grasping, calculating sell out they make him out to be. The bitter factions and their sense of ownership. Nikki fans and Storm fans tearing one another apart, insisting that one series or the other ruined him. One series or the other made him desperate enough to stage an elaborate hoax.

Kate tries to do her part. She vows to skim the surface. They really only need broad strokes. They just have to keep on top of where the spin might go next, but she gets caught up in it.

It's her own strange crisis, because there's such _viciousness_ on both sides. She feels it keenly. Anger and hurt. Defensiveness for him and for her. For Nikki and Rook and the things he makes. For him. She can't help feeling it.

_Nothing new. Someone will always hate it. Lots of someones, sometimes._

He'd told her that the first time she'd let it slip. Fury. A fierce, ridiculous need to defend. To hit back. He'd kissed the blush on her cheeks. She hadn't meant to say any of it out loud. He'd laughed, of course. Teased her a little and taken his lumps when she'd swatted at him.

But later he'd whispered _thank you_. Much later, in the dark, when he'd thought she was already asleep.

_Thank you for loving them, too._

That quiet whisper stays with her and she feels honor bound. Like she's the one who'll keep them safe until he's back. So Alexis takes charge of that part.

 _Never read the comments, Kate,_ she scolds gently. She takes the laptop from her and handles it. Gives her the highlights, but there's nothing much.

Those sightings map almost perfectly to the books, old and new. Places were Derrick and Nikki and his one-off heroes made their last stands or fought for their lives. Mysteries and thrillers turned instruction manual, and the theories are as ingenious as they are fanciful. It's compelling in its way. Details methodically extracted from the page. Insistence that everything is foreshadowing and all the books are filled with clues to how he'd pull it off. Where he'd hide out and plots of his own he might revisit. It's all very _Key to Rebecca_ to hear Alexis tell it.

 _Just wait,_ she says. _He'll wish he'd thought of it_.

_Might still use it._

Kate smiles, not just at the truth of it. At the conviction that never wavers in the girl. _He'll wish . . ._ She's her father's daughter.

Kate takes the runaway groom theories instead, even though they worry about that. Both Martha and Alexis worry. They give her sidelong looks.

_Katherine. Really. Is that . . . wise?_

It's not, in a way. It's an odd task to set herself to. She doesn't come off well in those, of course. There are endless recitations of her flaws, the more scathing, the better. She reads them all like some childhood punishment. She braces herself against the truth of some of it. Grows quietly furious at others. The unfairness and sheer wrong-headedness because that's now how they are. It's never been how they are. But in the end, every night, when she finally closes her eyes, she thinks: _He loves me. He loves me._

The versions of _him_ are the hard part, really. They're worse for her. There's nothing new in any of them. Nothing she didn't think the first few weeks she knew him. Nothing she didn't know befor even then, because he's never unearthed her name on the boards, but she has one.

There's nothing new, but she hates the endless repetition of ugly details. Two failed marriages. Long strings of brief, flashy relationships. Public record and things unearthed along the way. She hates the little things pried up and left like grit under her fingernails. Petty things and private things that don't matter. Things that do matter, but not how the wide world thinks they should. Things that are no one else's business.

But there's comfort in it, too. Martha offers help the first day, and Kate slides to make room. They both feel better for remembering where they started with this. Boxes of his childhood hurts, and they tell stories again. They turn over the lies and find the truth beneath. Or sometimes it's the other way around.

Kate hurts for him. They both do, but they piece him together all the same. They call up stories and silences and know him. What's true and what's not. In the end, there's so little of him—the real him—is in any of this, and there's comfort in that.

The runaway groom theorists like their photos. Most of the time they're even real, just old. It's slow going sorting them out. Photoshopped date stamps, some inserted, some removed or altered. A few have a little more work on the images, but it's usually easy enough for her to spot. There's nothing too sophisticated in it.

"Where's Dad tonight?" Alexis drops into the armchair. "Monte Carlo? Vegas?"

Kate startles at the sound of her voice. Her eyes feel like they're crossing. She catches sight of the clock and realizes why. Its ticked over into day three of this—Castle Watch as Ryan and Esposito insist on calling it—and she's been at this longer than she should have.

"Atlantic City." She stretches her arms overhead and leans back in the desk chair. She winces as her spine pops. "Elvis."

"Elvis!" She pops out of the chair with energy Kate envies. She comes around the desk to peer at the screen. "Oh, we've got to put those aside."

"I know." Kate laughs and bumps her head against the girl's shoulder. "A sighting from beyond the grave with him _as_ Elvis? That's gonna be a highlight."

Alexis leans further in to sweep her finger down the trackpad. "Are they all this blurry?"

"Most of them." Kate rolls the chair a little to the side, giving her room. "Bigfoot blurry. But he'll love that, too."

Alexis grins as she scrolls further down. "Oh . . . he left Atlantic City."

"Yeah. I think some of the later stuff is . . ." Kate blinks hard. She's been at this too long. "The Jersey Shore or something?"

"No." Alexis peers at the screen. "This is . . . that's weird . . ."

"What's weird?" Kate yawns. She's having trouble imagining _anything_ weird, given the context.

"It's the Hamptons." Alexis turns to her. "It's totally the other side. And there . . ." She clicks on an image to bring it up in its own window. She just touches a dark blur in the corner with her nail. "That's our first house."

"That _is_ weird." Kate sits forward. She reaches out to click back to the previous tab. She scans the message with the photo embedded in it. "There's no mention of the house."

"Maybe they didn't know?" Alexis frowns. "It was a long time ago."

"Maybe . . ." she murmurs, but it's officially weird. They know him. All these people with their stories and their blurry photos. They offer up the minutiae of his life. Details are a point of pride. "But it's not really a picture of the house just . . . the blurry guy nearby."

"Not a good one," Alexis scoffs. "Hardly looks like Dad at all. Even Bigfoot Dad."

Kate scrolls down, hoping for a follow-up from the poster. There's a little back and forth between posters—where he is, where he's definitely _not_ and why—but there's nothing else with a photo in that part of the thread. She clicks back over to it. She drags the image into a simple graphics editor and blows up the lower left hand corner, the one with the man in it.

"Not a good one," Kate murmurs. Alexis is right. He doesn't look much like Castle at all. Rough similarity of build, and maybe the squareness of his jaw. The blow up is even blurrier, of course. Practically useless except for a smudge of silver between the man's ear and the dark baseball cap pulled low. Silver, rather than brown.

It doesn't look much like Castle. But it just might look like Anderson Cross.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Again, the chapter got to be on the long side. Couple or three more to go.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's for the best. The part of her she wants to be—the part she's been growing into since she met him— believes. But it's small and fragile. It's been built up like this. In loss and pain and more kinds of fear than she can count. It's at war with years of habit. With the fact that she's still more at home with loneliness than she is with this."

It's for the best that Alexis was right there. That she didn't believe it for a second when Kate tried to brush it off as nothing. It's for the best that it's out in the open. That it's all of them together trying to figure out what it means. If it's anything at all, and what to do with it if it _is_ Cross in the photo.

It is, though. She knows it is.

 _All this time. M_ artha keeps repeating it, her eyes are wide. _He's had him right there all this time?_

_We don't know that, Martha . . ._

It's not convincing, even to herself. Whether it's her gut or evidence she just hasn't put together the right way yet—the universe or just the only logical conclusion—she knows.

Ryan says the photo is less than seventy-two hours old, based on surveillance and traffic footage.

 _Event posters on this pole. They're dry, so they went up after the rain earlier in the week. And this car here doesn't have a parking ticket yet._ He'd scrawled a time range in the margin of the grainy blow up of the photo. _Probably more like forty-eight hours._

Kate's not asking questions about the footage. She's not asking questions about the property records Esposito has on hand, either. A snarled trail showing the house changing hands a number of times since Castle sold it. Standing vacant now, if they can believe the construction permits.

She doesn't know what they can believe. That goes well beyond the not-quite-above-board methods they're using. It's not an investigation. She's not worried about the fruit of the poisoned tree, but they're taking risks even trying to get a read on the situation. And still, they're blind. Still, she has no real idea what she's asking them to walk into with her.

She's off in the kitchen, making coffee to pull them through what's looking to be the remainder of a night that's well past long already. She waves off their offers of help, because really, she's catching her breath. She's telling herself over and over again.

_It_ _'_ _s for the best._

The part of her that she _wants_ to be believes it. The part of her that's listening. Calming herself with well-worn motions that remind her of him. Careful, level spoons tipping into the press. Water just off the boil and patience. Quiet, still moments while the scent builds around her.

 _No._ He'd always catch her by the hand. He'd always keep her there, scolding when she'd argue that she had things to do. That she had to get ready.

_Four minutes of nothing. No chores, no tasks, to to-do-list items. Definitely no more clothes._

_Castle . . ._

_Kate. The coffee knows. It grows bitter if you neglect it. Four minutes of nothing. You can spare four minutes._

But he'd kiss her, of course. He'd hold her fast, and the time would go too quickly.

_Nothing, Castle?_

_Kissing . . . making out counts as nothing. Very zen. Coffee gets that._

She stills herself now. Four minutes of nothing as she watches particles settle and the column grow dark. She honors the ritual and half expects to feel him crowding up behind her. Lifting the hair from the nape of her neck and pressing a kiss there. Whispering that he's proud of her. That he's grateful and glad she's being careful. With them. With herself.

_It's for the best._

The part of her she wants to be—the part she's been growing into since she met him— believes. But it's small and fragile. It's been built up like this. In loss and pain and more kinds of fear than she can count.

It's at war with years of habit. With the fact that she's still more at home with loneliness than she is with this. Chosen family who'll leave their beds in the middle of the night. Who'll work for her and with one another to help her make sense of something that could be nothing.

It's at war with the conviction that risk to any of them feels like a betrayal. Of herself and the job she has to do. Of him and the people he's coming home to. The people she needs to keep safe.

It's at war with the fact that running at this, headlong and alone, feels like the right thing, because she knows this isn't nothing. She thinks about the pieces. The way _this_ stands out in how very ordinary it is. It's not some fan wanting their fifteen minutes. Stepping up to be part of the story. It's a blurred image of a man and the vague resemblance she tried to trace in her own rearview mirror. A house she'd never have recognized, left to herself.

She knows as surely as the first time she said out loud that he wasn't gone. This isn't nothing.

Two minutes now. Less than that by her watch, and she's eyeing the door. The exits. The biggest part of her has left them behind already already. It whispers that she can spare them. That she'll beg forgiveness if it comes to that. If it's an option. The biggest part of her imagines traveling that road—alone, right now—one last time to finish this.

But she looks out over the living room. She sees Martha reining herself in. Working methodically through what she knows about the house—the first house. Esposito nods and offers encouragement. He gently walks her back through things when they're not quite clear, and Ryan has pages fanned out in front of him. Markers and pens. A new section for the board. A reminder that this is part of a bigger picture.

She looks to the exits and thinks about Cross. She thinks about him slipping out with a bullet wound, leaving Martha slack jawed and guilt ridden. She thinks of Castle's face gone white and the dullness of his voice as he described the matter-of-fact brutality of Blaine's execution. The unwelcome spots of color on his cheeks and something he'd tried to push through into anger as he recounted their conversation.

_He acted like he'd saved the day. He expected me to be in awe._

The timer trills. She comes back to herself. Entirely to herself. She leans all her weight on the handle of the press and enjoys the familiar resistance. She gathers mugs and spoons on a tray. She glances at the door, but she doesn't think of leaving. She's glad of the locks now. Of the warmth and security of this place and these people around her.

Alexis raises her head. She looks puzzled. Like she's just realized that it's been a while. She smiles at the tray. At the scent of coffee.

"Kate," she says. "We need you. Can you look at this?"

"Yeah." She takes up the tray. "Yes. Coming."

* * *

It's not quite sunrise by the time Ryan and Esposito say their goodbyes, but the coming day is too easy to see from here. Esposito promises to catch Lanie up once she's off shift.

"Let her sleep first," Kate warns gently. "It's not . . ." She trails off. _Urgent_. It's what she wants to say, but of course they have no idea. No idea at all. "Not much she can do," she finishes lamely. That's true, at least. The three of them aren't going into this as cops, but they _are_ cops, for whatever that might be worth.

"She'll want to be here." Esposito inclines his head toward Martha and Alexis. They're clearing the last of mugs and things, talking quietly and winding down.

"Good." Kate's shoulders sag with relief she's too tired to second guess. Strength in numbers, if not safety, and there's a lightness to Lanie that's hard to rival. "That'll be . . . I'll feel better."

They both nod. The three of them share the weight of the moment there in the doorway. She's not alone in this feeling—knowing that this time it's not nothing. They have something as close to a plan as they're going to get when, really, they have no idea what to expect. They have to be ready for everything from simple reconnaissance to some kind of end game.

She wishes there were something she could say. Something rousing or reassuring. Some kind of thanks that might be anywhere near enough, even if they'd wave it off. She hears her name behind her, though. Alexis and Martha both yawning good nights to all of them from the bottom of the stairs.

"We should go," Ryan murmurs. "All of us should try to catch a couple hours."

He touches Kate's shoulder briefly. Esposito jerks his chin in agreement. It's downright demonstrative for the three of them. She shuts the door behind them, a tight smile surfing on top of fizzing unease.

She drifts through the kitchen and living room, clearing surfaces and switching off lights. Ryan is right. She should head upstairs. There's no way around the full day of work ahead of them—more if they catch a body—and she really ought to rest at least.

She finds herself in the office instead, though. She's cross-legged on the floor with a photo album spread open on her knees. She'd meant to put it back on the shelf. There's nothing to learn here she doesn't already know, but she can't tear herself away.

It's mostly Alexis in the pictures. A spindle-legged blur with her hair flying. Close-ups of her grinning hard and wistful shots of her in the distance. On a hill squinting into the sun with a sand pail clutched in one fist.

She tells herself she's studying the house. The porch and garage and all the entrances. The tiny yard giving way to tall grass. The narrow, flattened path just beyond the gate that must lead out to the beach. She tells herself she's getting the lay of the land, but she's looking for him.

Her heart flips every time she turns a page and he's there. Sometimes just a profile in shadow, his lips pressed to his daughter's hair as the sharp point of her chin digs into his shoulder. A few blurry, off-center shots of him pulling faces. Pictures Alexis must have insisted on taking herself.

There's only one of him writing. His bare feet are propped on the porch railing and his hair stands on end like he's been worrying at it. One hand is poised over the keyboard, the other raised in the _just-a-minute_ gesture that's driven her mad more than once.

She wonders about it. A single, lonely image. She knows things came to him quickly in those days. She glances up at the spines on another shelf. She counts off the titles and tries to guess how they map on to this.

"I took that one." Martha's hand lands gently on her shoulder as she perches at the edge of the chair behind Kate. It should startle her, but it doesn't. She wasn't quite expecting her, but Martha always knows when she's doing this to herself. Mourning alone. "He was killing himself that summer. He wouldn't write a word until Alexis was in bed. He'd spend every minute of every day with her and work through the night."

"She must have been a handful by then." Kate runs her fingers down the opposite page. A suddenly tall Alexis turns away from the lens. She holds a palm out and frowns. "Short nights. She wasn't a baby any more."

"She wasn't," Martha agrees. "That was hard for him."

Kate smiles up at her. "It's _still_ hard for him."

"True." Martha gives a brief chuckle. "But that was the first time he ever asked me for help. That wasn't easy, either. He thought I'd wander off like Meredith, I suppose."

"Martha." Kate lays her own hand over the one still resting on her shoulder. He doesn't talk much about his relationship with his mother between childhood and when she came to live with them. It's his nature to be content with where they are now. To not dwell on harder times. "He's so glad she has you."

"I know that, dear." She strokes a hand over the crown of Kate's head. "The same goes for you, you know."

"Lucky," she says quietly. It captures everything. The bedrock beneath the unease. With everything they've been through—whatever's to come—she feels lucky.

Martha echoes her. They're both tired now. Kate feels it in the slow trail of fingers through her hair. The moment between them has done its work like so many moments before. Since this all started. She's just about to swing the album closed. Just about to insist they both head up for the night, but Martha leans in. She traces a finger over the photo. The windows and the porch railing. She dots at his hand with her nail like it drives her mad, too.

"You think this is it, don't you?" she asks suddenly.

Kate hesitates. Doubt crowds in on her. Weight she still thinks should be hers alone. But it feels full circle, too. She closes her eyes and remembers the soothing dark. Martha's cool fingers on her skin.

"I think so." She lays her palm over the page. "Whether it's Cross screwing up or letting himself be seen . . ."

"Letting himself?" she repeats sharply. "Katherine, if he's _trying_ to draw you out . . ."

"Then I give him what he wants." She closes the album with a firm snap. "This is what we hoped would happen, remember? That all this would flush him out."

"And if he's flushing _you_ out." Martha's fingers curl hard over her shoulder. "You could be walking into a trap."

Kate thinks about it. She doesn't quite know how to say this. That she'd trade herself for him in a heartbeat. That she doesn't think it'll come to that, but she would. A truth comes to her, though. An odd, stray thought that's strangely comforting.

"Hurting me gets him nothing." It's an unexpected sting. It pricks pride. "Satisfaction, I guess." She smiles at that. She _annoys_ Cross. No more than that, but she'll take it. "But any 'accident' I might have is more trouble than it's worth."

"The last thing he wants is another barrage of press." Martha nods reluctantly. "You in the dress and the masses crying conspiracy."

"Your master plan, Martha." She tries to push lightness into it. More certainty than she really feels. "Couldn't be safer."

"Safer." Martha tweaks her ear for it, but she doesn't smile.

Kate starts to push up from the floor. It's long past time they both tried for some rest.

Martha stills her, though. She takes her chin in hand tips her face up. "Thank you, dear."

"For what?" Kate swallows hard. She's a mass of nerves, suddenly. Guilt, because it's like Martha is looking right through her.

"For not going alone."

* * *

The sun hasn't quite set behind them as they pull into the quaint village business district. Esposito cuts the engine. Ryan folds the last of his maps and tucks away surveillance screen caps. Kate checks her phone one last time. She brushes her fingers over the last message from Alexis. A response to hers letting them know they were at the edge of town. Well past the roadside shrine.

_Luck . . ._

The sidewalk cafes and biergartens are overflowing already. It's the height of the season. It's good and bad for their purposes. They stick to the plan. They live in the light, because that's what Cross absolutely doesn't want.

 _The more the merrier,_ she thinks as she forces herself into a relaxed gait. She slows the pace and tugs the boys along with her. It's true, but it's better if no one recognizes them right now. Recognizes _her._

They don't exactly blend in, though. Esposito grumbles about being brown in the Hamptons and tugs at the collar of the only and only "smart casual" shirt he seems to own. Ryan would do better if he could dial down the cop vibe, but his gaze sweeps from side to side like he's busily matching the footage he's been poring over for almost a day with the real thing.

They make for an odd trio, but their timing is good. The streets and sidewalks are bustling. The day-time crowd rolls in from the beach, jostling them from behind. Women in loose, bright wraps and men scuffing along in ridiculously high end flip-flops, carrying sandy, sleepy children.

But there's another crowd running counter to that. Couples and families. Teenagers laughing and shoving each other. They're all heading back toward the water, tugging on sweaters and zipping themselves into cover-ups against the wind that's raising a swirl of sand around their ankles. Esposito turns his head, an eyebrow raised. Ryan holds a hand out to stop them as he peers at a poster. It's new. Tacked over another that helped him pin down the timeline.

"Fireworks on the beach," he reads. "Looks like a good crowd."

"Almost sunset," Esposito adds.

He's eager. They're _all_ eager, but Kate hesitates. They'd planned to grab a drink somewhere. To give themselves time to get a feel for the place. The house is back toward the beach, though, and this might be their best chance to head that way and peel off unnoticed.

She forces herself to still. To weigh what's smart against pins and needles pushing at her skin. The need to _act_ that makes her breath come faster. She smells the salt of the ocean and thinks of him. Of Alexis in his arms and Martha snapping a photo. She sees them in every family coming and going, and for good or for ill, she's done waiting.

She turns to Ryan and Esposito. She opens her mouth to tell them to fall into the crowd—to head for the house—but there's a shout from up ahead. They freeze, staring at each other as it ripples through the crowd. Confused at first, but building into a single word as they're pulled along with the sudden rush.

_Fire._

The surge carries them toward the beach, then takes a hard left—away from the house. Kate can see the smoke in the distance. She turns. She reaches out to tug Esposito's sleeve, but it's a stranger next to her. A big man whose broad shoulders block her view of everything in front of her. She turns the other way and Ryan is gone, too.

She hears her name. _Beckett._ Once, then twice. Sharp, but barely audible above the crowd.

The third time is different. _Kate._ Her first name, low in her ear as an arm slips around around her shoulders from behind, tugging her backward into darkness.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for hanging in with me. Nearing wrap up.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's too familiar, despite the crowd she can just see out of the corner of her eye. Despite the noise and the scent of smoke on salt air. The shadows and the tell-tale metallic click are too familiar. That stupid baseball cap pulled low and the barest glint of blue eyes. She wonders how many things she missed this time. How many different ways she should have seen this coming."
> 
> * * *

It's too familiar, despite the crowd she can just see out of the corner of her eye. Despite the noise and the scent of smoke on salt air. The shadows and the tell-tale metallic click are too familiar. That stupid baseball cap pulled low and the barest glint of blue eyes. She wonders how many things she missed this time. How many different ways she should have seen this coming.

She's curious. Detached and strangely calm about the whole thing. Not strangely, maybe. She remembers her words to Martha. More than just a soothing fiction: Hurting her gets him nothing.

She's about to ask what should have given it away, but Cross pins her to the rough brick on one side of the narrow passage with an arm across her throat. Apparently he doesn't want to talk this time. She idly wonders what that means.

He disarms her in short order and deprives her of her phone. Phones, actually. He slams her everyday smartphone into the wall next to her head, hardly checking to make sure the screen's gone completely dark before he pockets the remains.

He finds the burner—without hesitation or so much as patting her down—in the zipper pocket at the small of her back, a strange feature of the fitted tank she never imagined any use for until today. He's been watching. Closely. It's no surprise, or it shouldn't be, but the wordless intimacy bothers her. His hands on her.

He flips the phone open and closed, thumbing one of the side buttons experimentally before it joins the other. He hardly spares her a further once over before he lets his arm drop.

"Move," he grunts. He jerks her off the wall and shoves her forward, further along the dim corridor. Further from the still-teeming main street and Esposito and Ryan, somewhere in the crowd.

She thinks about yelling. More on general principle than any real hope that the boys might hear her. There's zero chance anyone will pick her cries out above the din, even if they're listening for them. It might annoy him, though. She's torn on whether or not that's worth it. Whether or not this is the time.

He keeps the gun low at her kidney and steers with the occasional shoulder check. He has them following a circuitous path, keeping between buildings for the most part, and hustling across the occasional stretch of open space. She wonders what the point is. Certainly no one's paying them any attention, and between the noise, the sinking sun, and the smell, it's trivial to keep track of where they are.

It's habit, she supposes. All-encompassing paranoia on his part, and she knows—suddenly and certainly—that it was him. The photo. Too ordinary _not_ to stand out, and it doesn't look much like Castle at all. It wasn't Cross tripping up or even just letting himself be seen. It goes beyond the possibilities they'd considered.

He orchestrated all of it. The post and the picture. The house conveniently in the background and now the fire besides. A distraction to separate her from Ryan and Esposito, which means he wants her for something. Her alone. She almost says it out loud. The words are on her tongue. _It was you . . . But why?_

She laughs instead. She tips her head back and thinks of him. Of Castle and what he'd have to say about her side of the most clichéd dialogue in potboiler literature. _If it weren't for you meddling kids . . ._ She laughs.

Cross either mistakes it for a distraction—an attempt to break away—or he doesn't appreciate the meta-commentary on their situation. The gun digs hard enough into her floating rib that she jerks around to glare.

They're just passing under a tin-shaded bulb at the back door of some business. The light is bad and the cap throws harsh shadows, but it's the first real look she gets at him. That she's gotten since he could barely hold himself upright, thanks to a gunshot. Or so they thought, anyway.

He looks worse now. He's easily twenty pounds lighter than he was, a loss exacerbated by ill-fitting clothes. A khaki photographer's vest over a loud, patterned club shirt that gapes at the neck. Pants that pool near his ankles in the way that suggests they're loose in the waist. He's going for casual. Affluent and maybe a little eccentric. He's missing by a lot on both counts.

The change in him is striking enough that she can't stop staring. He doesn't seem to appreciate that, either. He jabs the gun up and in again. He gets them moving without a word.

It's an act. Another ploy so she'll underestimate him. That what she thinks at first, but as she takes in the details, she's not so sure. The clothes could be theater, certainly. The uneven stubble underscoring the gaunt, colorless planes of his face in the alley light. That could all be put on to make her think he's desperate.

But there's more to it than that. There's a stiffness to his gait, and he's too rough when he leads with a shoulder knocking into hers. Like he's not sure of his strength, but he wants her to be. Even the gun is overkill, far beyond the conversational click of the safety in her ear.

This isn't the man whose oily familiarity rolled over her in a New York high rise. He's not even the shadowy figure trying to menace her from the back seat of her car.

He's _old._ The thought hits her forcibly. She twists around to look at him again and stumbles on uneven pavement. He catches her arm hard enough to bruise, but they both almost go down. She catches herself on the wall. The heel of her hand scrapes over brick and her fingers snag at a coarse stone sill. It's the only thing that keeps them upright.

She knows in that moment it's not an act. Wherever he's been, whatever he's been doing, he's aged almost immeasurably in just a few weeks. Since the diner. Since the accident, most likely, if not before. Since Gemini and whatever hell that brought down on his head. She doesn't know what it means. What he can possibly have been up to and what it means for Castle.

She doesn't know what it means for her, right now. That's what she should be worried about. Staying central enough to give Ryan and Esposito a chance to catch up. Keeping herself where she can make noise. Draw attention. Se's lost track, though. The sun is all but gone, and she thinks the glow she spies between fences and buildings and stalls might be fire instead. She's disoriented, and the wind whips scent all around her.

She digs in her heels at last. She stops. Turns on him and backs away to spill out of the mouth of the narrow gap they've been moving through. He can shoot her if he wants, but she's damned well going to fall out into the open, screaming bloody murder all the while. If he's not going to shoot her, he's going to tell her where the hell they're going. What he could possibly want from her.

Where the hell Castle is.

He faces her, the gun at his side, hidden in the loose folds of his clothing. It's more out of habit than real caution, she thinks. He takes a step closer, but he's in no hurry to have his hands on her at the moment. She backs further away still, wondering at this. The total lack of interest in controlling her. The fact that he suddenly doesn't seem to care who sees them.

She looks around as he pushes past her. The fact that there's no one around might have something to do with his waning concern. He's managed, somehow, to bring them around to dead space away from businesses and their foot traffic, on the very fringes of the residential area with its sprawling lawns and privacy hedges.

Cross steps up to a tall cyclone fence. It's eight feet at least, and the links are filled in with the dark green plastic slats typical of a construction site. He fishes in one of the pockets on his vest for a key that he fits into a padlock on the gate. Something more serious than a standard bolt cutter could handle, she notes, and she doesn't miss the rapid series of careful gestures that come next. Some kind of early warning system she thinks. Something crude. But before she can really look, he's manhandling her through and locking the gate behind them.

She turns quickly in place. They're at the back of a wide, squat building that's seen better days. There are no entrances on the side she can see, and there's not much of a perimeter between its footprint and the fence. A garage, she thinks, though it's oddly tall for that.

She looks up. She listens hard and tries to get her bearings. There are sirens now. The burble of voices rises above, but she thinks she knows which way the water is at least. She faces the other way. Back toward the village center unless she's still completely turned around. She might be. There's only one thing visible when she tips her head back to clear the high fence. One house.

The first house.

* * *

Cross drags her around the side of the building to a small entrance with another complicated set of locks. He negotiates them with the familiarity of long acquaintance. Here. He's _been here_ the whole time. She pictures the dates on the construction permits. The back-and-forth deeds to the house and the property. It goes back so much further than the wedding. The accident.

He watches. She remembers Castle's face as he ran down the litany of pictures from Paris. Alexis going all the way back almost to her birth. Places and moments in the heart of their lives. He's _been_ watching for far longer than she's been in the picture.

"Did you buy it from him? A little summer place so you could watch them?"

Cross ignores her. He muscles her inside as she leans back, not making it easy. Alone with him in a secluded space—one he knows and she doesn't—is not where she wants to be. Esposito and Ryan will think of the house, but not right away. Not in time, maybe. They'll look for her in the village first.

She needs to draw this out. Her mind is spinning, and she needs it back on track. She pulls her focus back to her surroundings. To what comes next and how the hell she deals with him and whatever it is he wants.

The door closes with a heavy echo. The sound bounces around for a second or more, telling her the place is empty or nearly so. That's . . . alarming. It would be if she left herself time to consider what that and this broken down version of him might mean, but she moves on, willing her eyes to adjust faster to the darkness.

There's row of long, squat windows high above what must have been a bank of roll-up doors at some point. The space is lightless otherwise, but the last of the sun shows her outlines where lighter mortar gives way to dark. Once, twice, three times. Main entrances, bricked over now. That and the ancient scent of gasoline and motor oil tells her she guessed right: It's a three-car garage, or it was at one point.

He shoves her forward again, gripping her by one arm at the elbow. She gets the feeling he's enjoying this now—his own sure footedness in the dim light and her halting steps. She sets her teeth and takes a breath to clear her head. She's determined not to give him any satisfaction at all, but she shrinks back the next second when he makes a sudden move, reaching across her body with his other hand.

 _His gun hand._ It's all she can think as she curls in on herself, pushing down with her forearms and trying to twist away. He grates out a laugh, though, as his palm—his empty palm—sweeps along the wall beyond her to find a seam. He flips up a small panel and shoulders open a door. This one's not locked. Just a crude lever under the panel, but she's pretty sure she'd never have seen it, even in full light.

There's a steep staircase not even a stride ahead. Cross propels her onward and up, rougher than ever now, like he's feeding on her brief flicker of fear. She wants to kick herself. She wants to kick _him._ A full-color fantasy plays out in her mind. Surround sound of his body caroming from side to side as he falls away. It's satisfying enough that she goes cold inside. Her heart slows and it's only he sudden contrast—the abrupt calm—that tells her it was racing only seconds ago.

"Mother-in-law apartment?"

She asks like it's a social call. Polite curiosity about the place he's brought her to, and she's proud of her level tone. It gives her courage. Stupid courage. She widens her stride as she asks, taking the next few stairs two at a time.

It breaks his hold on her easily. He has to heave himself forward to keep up. He's breathing hard as she hits a cramped landing and a ninety-degree turn. She's needling him. Exhilarated by the fury she feels rolling off him, but it's more than that. The minute she hits the turn, it's more than that.

There's nothing but a short few stairs left and a a solid-looking door at the top. There's light bleeding underneath. Just a sliver, but it has weight. Significance. She turns inward. Pays attention. It smells different up here. The echo of her footsteps is dampened like it's lived in, whatever's beyond the door. It feels lived in, and her stomach is suddenly in knots.

Cross glares at her from the landing. It's too dim to see much, but she feels it. The air crackling with sudden meaning, and it's like the diner parking lot all over. Her eyes cut from him to the door and back again. To that sliver of light.

Cross lifts one foot, then the other. Heavy, deliberate steps now as he brushes by her. There's the music of metal on metal. Keys dangling from his fingers and the scrape of one as he takes his time fitting it it in the lock. He pushes the door open and the light inside is bright enough to hurt her eyes after the last . . . however long it's been.

"After you."

He sweeps an arm upward, calm now. In control, though he was seething three seconds ago. But that's gone. Whatever edge she imagined she had is gone. He's smiling.

Everything tumbles down inside her. Hope that hardly kindled long enough to call it that. Nothing she wants is through that door. Nothing.

She looks up at Cross and thinks of Martha. She studies his smile, now that there's finally some light. He's trying. He's back to Anderson Cross and the affable dismissal of a powerful man. He slips it on like a bespoke suit and thinks he's pulling it off.

It's broken, though. _He_ _'_ _s_ broken. Terribly and finally and long before she came into the picture, but she thinks of Martha. She studies him and sees how that smile must have been charming once upon a time. There's just the right touch of danger in it, coiled up at the corners. He must have been different then, even if it only for one night. Martha must have seen something in him. Sparked it and brought it to life.

She thinks of Castle. She sees the resemblance now. Something in the gallantry of the gesture. His arm raised to usher her through. The way he's holding himself. The nonchalant tone. It calls up echoes of Castle at last, and she doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. She doesn't know whether to scream at Cross or run.

She does the only thing she can in the end. She drags herself up the last few steps anyway. One foot after the other, because there's no other choice, though she knows before she gets there. Before she ducks under the low sill of the door and steps into the empty room.

"He's not here, Kate. No one here but you and me."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Sorry for the delay. One more chapter and an epilogue. Tentatively, a separate one shot as a bookend after that. Thank you for reading.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He wants something, and he has definite ideas about how this will go. Just like the diner. And just like the diner, she bites her tongue. She doesn't say her lines. He's waiting for just that, and not giving him what he wants—what he expects—has brought her this far."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to split this chapter. Posting it simultaneously with Chapter 16. Chapter 17 will be the epilogue.

* * *

_Where is he_?

It's the obvious question. The one she bites back as she moves further into the room. The one she pushes down alongside all the fear boiling in some dark corner of her mind. Not for herself, though there's a chorus of voices that she's pointedly ignoring on that front. Fear that she's blown this. That Cross didn't just orchestrate this, he saw them coming, and he's long since moved Castle out of reach.

She pushes all of that down. Because there's no such place, and she's _here._ She's closer, even if she does't yet understand how. For all Cross's erratic behavior, there's a ruthless practicality she can count on. That and arrogance.

He wants something, and he has definite ideas about how this will go. Just like the diner. And just like the diner, she bites her tongue. She doesn't say her lines. He's waiting for just that, and not giving him what he wants—what he expects—has brought her this far.

"They're not coming," he says, finally. There's an edge of irritation under it, like he's moving along the script without her. Salvaging the scene. He steps into the room and closes the door behind him. "Your boys. Not for a while, anyway."

It should probably bother her. The nonchalant announcement and the final-sounding snick of the lock. But the room itself draws her, and for the moment, Cross pays her no mind as she paces from end to end and back.

He fusses with his pockets like he's settling in. Keys and the remains of her phone offloaded on to a kind of work bench. He tucks her weapon away. Something that closes with a metallic click. He turns to watch her again. "They're under the impression that you're headed back out to the road."

"The accident," she murmurs, like it makes perfect sense. She thinks of Paris, of all things. Castle turning a nightmare into anecdotes.

_He shot my phone!_

_I know, Castle. I was on the other end, remember?_

But he'd managed to spin the worst moments into tiny stories, each one so impossible it made her laugh. Stories like always, to say things he shouldn't or couldn't. Stories to help both of them cope.

"You cloned my phone." She spares Cross a glance over her shoulder. It's one of the things Castle shouldn't have told her—something different in the covert story—and she can't quite resist. "The GPS signal."

"Something like that." He leans back against the bench. "Simple enough."

She makes a non-committal sound of agreement, and the conversation stalls again. It surprises him. It _aggravates_ him. She catches a glimpse out of the corner of her eye. A twitch of one eyebrow and the dissolution of an indulgent smile.

She'd like to call this defiance. Refusal to give him the satisfaction of panic. She'd like to tell him outright that it doesn't matter what happens to her, because Martha and Alexis and every friend they have in the world will find Castle, whether he's in Montauk or in Outer Mongolia, and bring him home.

But it's not confidence. It's not defiance or any certainty at all that this is finally the end. It's none of that. It's just the room. The fact that Castle was here, and the driving need to go over every inch of it. To find something that brings her nearer to him. She doesn't have the attention to spare for whatever conversation Cross thought they'd be having.

So she roams. For the moment, he lets her.

It's a modest apartment. Back near the work bench, there's a bank of cabinets and a half-sized fridge and a sink. Off that, a small, enclosed space juts out from behind the only other door. A bathroom, most likely.

The rest is wide and windowless, save two small, dormered skylights, one near each end of the room. There's tube lighting over the work bench and battery powered lanterns here and there on the floor, but it's gloomy on the whole. The roof slopes low enough at the edges that she has to duck, and the perimeter is cluttered compared with the open center of the floor.

It's meant to look disused, as if the area has long been given over to storage. Boxes are stacked in artful clusters, interspersed with hulking shapes draped in canvas. More paranoia. It's to shout that no one lives here, but when she thinks of the office—the sheer _scale_ of his identity as Anderson Cross—she knows this is amateur hour.

The dust is wrong, and the creases in the fabric are too sharp, even though it looks like they've been dragged over a dirty surface for good measure. She doesn't have to look hard to see that it's all new. Recent things, recently used. However long he might have been holding on to the house, _this_ is new.

It's all thrown together, and she knows at a glance that he's got nothing like the resources he commanded a few months ago. He's not just "on the outside." He's alone in the world. Even the boxes and cast-off things are functional. They're turned on their odd sides so they take up too much space. They're all makeshift tables and chairs, other than one low, wide trunk off to the side, carefully clear of crates and tarps and other obstacles. That's his arsenal, most likely.

She turns her back on it. On him. There's no point in approach. He's the one with the gun in hand, and the space is small enough he'd hardly miss if he decided to shoot. That surprises him, too. He probably expected a confrontation by now. That she'd try to arm herself or overpower him.

Still, he's complacent. Confident enough to watch, silent and bemused. He's patient for now, like she's a child and he's letting her wear herself out.

She makes the most of the mood while it lasts. The far corner of the room draws her further away from him. Heat and a low hum reach out from that direction. She moves toward it and he follows. Just few quick steps before he stops short enough that she knows he wishes he hadn't.

_Not so casual now._

That's interesting. There's something he's not eager for her to see, though he's given the impression so far that she has free run of the place. It buoys her. It gives her hope that she's not imagining it. That there's actually something here. Not him—not Castle—but _something,_ if she can just hang on. If she can put this together.

She stops in front of the tallest heap. The dimmest corner of the room. It's layered in tarps, paint-splattered and genuinely old in this case. She holds her hand out toward the looming shape, like she's warming herself by a fire.

Electronics. Surveillance. It's obvious enough that she wonders why it's this he's taken pains to hide. Why he's hiding it still. He brought her here, after all, and it's nothing she wouldn't have expected.

She reaches for the edge of the outermost layer. She pulls her hand back and shoots a glance over her shoulder. The hunch pays off. She catches him out completely. The fingers of his free hand flex and straighten. A quick fist and a flick of his other wrist that brings the barrel of the gun up. There's casual confidence in the movements. Muscle memory that's completely at odds with the look on his face.

It's not that he doesn't want her to see. He doesn't want to look. He's devastated by the very thought. _Old,_ she thinks again, and she's cold with fear. It's Castle. Whatever's done this to Cross, it's mostly about Castle. The realization galvanizes her. She has to know.

She jerks at the topmost tarp and heaves it aside. She pulls at the next and the next. They're heavy. Dusty and deliberately pinned down in places. There's a nightmare quality to it. How slowly she's moving, and it feels urgent, even though he just stands by now. He doesn't want to look, but he makes no move to stop her.

Monitors come to light first. Familiar blue-grey with fuzzy-around-the-edges of them shows anything but leaves and plastic fencing shivering in the wind. A steady flick from one view to the next. The coverage is impressive, but there's nothing much to see at the moment.

_They're not coming . . . Not yet anyway._

She looks back at Cross again, but he's blank and still. No reaction. It's not this he cares about.

She's drawn the wrong way at first. Instinct tugs her closer to the skylight—to where she might actually be able to see, but there's . . . something. A shift in his posture. Fractional relaxation, as if he's staved off the inevitable for a moment more. It has her spinning on her heel. Heading away from the light. It comes into focus, then. A shape about three times as long as it is deep, hip high.

It sits at a right angle to the row of monitors, not quite concealed by the junk piled on it or the boxes hastily pulled around to its front. She moves quickly, pulling things off and casting them aside. She drags at overlapping tarps as she goes.

The fabric snags on something. A tall, awkward shape that lists to one side. It shifts before she can pull the tarp free of it. There's a clatter of casters, and she thinks for a moment that it's a desk chair. Something on wheels that spins, but it's heavier, and the upper part is wrong.

It's a screen. A flat rectangle that tilts up, and it doesn't make sense at first. Coils and wires looped around a pair of hooks on the pole that rises above it. The various windows in it. A scatter of letters in different colors. Red and green and blue. A zero in every square.

_Vital signs._

She knows what it is, but she doesn't. There's a sudden, sick feeling of things colliding in her mind. It has her kicking boxes and clawing the last of the canvas away until she's unveiled all of it.

An empty hospital bed.

Cross's voice is in her ear. Right behind her, all of a sudden and she's shocked white inside, even before she understands the words.

"I didn't think he'd live." It's a flat kind of afterthought. Like something he'd meant to mention earlier. "For weeks, I didn't think he'd live."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Again, sorry for the split, but the next chapter is live simultaneous with this one.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He hates her, she realizes. It's a step up from irritation. From dismissal. A step up from the diner parking lot and it curves her lips into a hard smile. He sees it. He answers in kind."
> 
> * * *

They sit side by side on the bed. He rests the gun on his thigh, but it's like they're past all that. Both of them so drained that the life and death of all this will have to go on with a minimum of dramatics.

_Martha would be so disappointed._

A short laugh creeps out of her as the thought trips through her mind. Cross gives her a sharp look. His fingers twitch and the gun moves with them. She waves him off, though. She shows her hands.

"Tell me," she says, and it's more instruction than command or plea. For all the drama they're having none of, it's like a stage direction. "Just _tell_ me."

It rankles him any way. The very fact of her gets under his skin, and he stiffens again. She shakes her head.

"Tell me," she says once more, and the fight goes out of him.

"I was too late." He sounds like he can't believe it. Like it shouldn't be possible, and the undercurrent of arrogance is something familiar at last. It's the first hint tonight of the man she met months ago. "I knew there was a threat. The wedding, and Blaine was . . . better connected than my intel suggested. But the two of you . . ." He shoots her a sidelong look of disgust. "All that back and forth over those few days. I had it covered until that. They'd never have moved if . . . You were _supposed_ to be in the city."

"Supposed to be," she echoes. She presses her palm to the bed. She wants to rest her cheek against it, even in the midst of all this. She wants to breathe in his scent and remember that he's _alive._ Somewhere, he's alive, or none of this would be happening. She shakes herself. "You were too late." She swallows hard. She knows already. She's put it together easily enough that the possibility must have been in the back of her mind all this time. Saying it out loud is something different, though. Something worse. "Castle was in the car."

"He was in the car." There's a long pause, and she'd like to kill him. She'd genuinely like to wrap her fingers around his throat, but he takes the story up again. "He did good. Held his own for a while." Cross's voice loses an iota of its hardness, as if he's proud. As if he has any right to be. There's the same broken smile that made her think of Martha before. That made her think of Castle. "Almost made daylight."

"The park," she says faintly. She feels the shade on her face. The solidity of Lanie and Esposito on either side of her, looking back and away from the site of the accident. From the shrine. "Ifhe could've made it that far . . ."

It's worse. Imagining it like this is worse. And better, too. Solid facts that can't help but light up the worst of the shadows. Because he's the writer, but her imagination is just as dangerous as his.

She thinks about him on his own. Their _I love you_ s just fading, and his mind working fast. She imagines him, annoyed at first. Baffled and angry and indignant, with no idea who could be doing this _now._ Who could be after them when they'd finally put Bracken away.

She imagines Tyson and Dunn and a dozen other psychopaths and thugs running through his mind. She wonders if Cross occurred to him at all. The man he'd just learned not to mistake for family. She imagines him afraid and still wanting to _know._ He always wants to know. She imagines him alone trying to hang on.

 _We want the happy ending, we can't give up_.

Cross is talking. Babbling. She's lost the thread of it. "He ran out of room. The car was off the road by the time I . . ."

"You killed them both." She fills the gap. Jumps ahead when he trails off into silence this time, because some things don't bear thinking about. Not right now. "The driver and his partner. You put the body in the car."

"I pulled Richard _out,_ " he snaps. He takes a leap forward of his own. Right over the grisly details, like they don't matter. They don't, she realizes, and she'll deal with that later. The fact that she cares not at all about these men. However Cross dispatched them, the only thing she feels is glad. She'll deal with that later.

"I hardly left him those first few weeks. Hardly slept. Made do with what I had on hand here. Took what I needed. It's a safe house. I didn't . . . " He breaks off. He looks at her, full on, like he's expecting something from her. Gratitude or maybe venom. Accusation or thanks. Something. But she stares straight ahead. She gives him nothing, and he says it again. The same flat tone. "I didn't think he'd live."

It washes over her in a sick wave. The bloody scene in their bedroom at the loft when Cross was shot. Kitchen gloves and needle nose pliers. She tells herself he must have had better here. It's a safe house. _He must have._ She repeats it to herself, but the timeline falls into place. Weeks and weeks of touch and go. Weeks and weeks of Castle so badly hurt that he might have died in this room. Worse than alone.

"But he did. He lived." She doesn't look at Cross. She says it for herself. A touchstone, though she perversely wants to keep it from him. She doesn't want him to have the satisfaction of it. The reassurance. Whatever happened in this room—weeks of whatever he had to do to keep Castle alive—it broke him, and it's no more than he deserves. "You knew he would. That night at the diner. We were looking before that. You had to have known, but you didn't bother until . . . you _knew_ I thought he was alive. That it wasn't his body. You'd have let me . . . you'd have let Alexis and Martha . . . "

"To _save_ him. To save Martha and Alexis. Even you . . . You're damned _right_ I would have. I would've taken him to the ends of the earth and _kept_ him there."

"And if he'd died." The words hit her in the gut. He _didn't_ die. He didn't, but the words are awful anyway. "You'd have let me go on looking forever. you'd have disappeared."

"Richard isn't the only one they want dead." To his credit, he doesn't sound like expects her. To care. "They would have used them." He's choking on the words as something new comes over him. Control slips, and his knuckles go white. His voice drops to something so cold it's not even angry. "They _will_ use them. Because they know who Richard is. And now they know he's alive. Because of you."

He hates her, she realizes. It's a step up from irritation. From dismissal. A step up from the diner parking lot and it curves her lips into a hard smile. He sees it. He answers in kind.

"You think you've won something, don't you?" His tone is abruptly conversational. A disturbing flip of some switch. Echoes of Bracken in him now, and it turns her stomach. "He's alive, Kate. But for how long? They'll come for him. They'll come for Alexis or Martha or _you._ There's noise already. Chatter, thanks to you. And I'm so far out of the game—holed up in this place—if _I_ _'_ _m_ hearing it . . . Do you have any idea how bad this is? Do you have any idea what you've done?"

"Do _you_?" Her mouth is hot with fury. With bile and metal that she swallows down. He knows better than anyone what she's most afraid of. He's using it, but she won't let him play her. "You said it yourself. You've been holed up here for weeks. Hiding. No backup. No help, because you're 'on the outside.' Because you have a _cover_ to protect. _Hiding._ All this was your master plan?"

"I kept him alive." He's snarling. In her face, but there's a hitch in his voice. "I kept him _safe._ "

"From what? From whom? Do you even know _that?_ " She swings around to face him. She latches on to it. The shred of uncertainty. She leans in. Crowds him. "Blaine thought Castle had a handler. Did he think that was you?"

"I took care of Blaine," he shoots back. His tone is something from an old playbook, but this is her game now. Interrogation.

"You took care of Blaine," she repeats the words slowly. Like there must be something else underneath. Something less pathetic. He stares her down, but it's bravado. It's hollow, and they both know it. "What about Blaine's buyers? Whoever else he was working with in the CIA? 'An inside job at the highest level.' Isn't that what you said?"

He opens his mouth. He's scrambling to find his footing again, and she can't have that. She shifts gears.

"Is it even Blaine? Do you even know _that?_ Hell, what about Paris? Waiting until the wedding so it would be sure to make the headlines. It's the same MO. What if it's the man who took Alexis? What if it's any one of a hundred people who want _you_ dead? What if they want Castle dead because _you_ sent him into that trap? Because they think Castle is . . . whatever the hell you're supposed to be." She breaks off. The words leave her all at once. Dead in the air as it sinks in. "You _don_ _'_ _t_ know, do you? You have no idea."

He's silent. Unmoving and staring at his own hands. Staring at the fingers wrapped around the gun like he's forgotten what it is.

He's thought settles on her, and she almost goes for the gun. She can practically feel the metal under her skin. The satisfying weight the sweet resistance of the trigger giving way beneath her finger.

She pictures it. Another vivid fantasy, and she wonders how many problems it might solve. The body of an unidentified man, shot dead in the Hamptons. Unsolved. Unsolvable, but there'd be headlines. She'd make sure of that. They'd hear. Whoever they are, they'd hear all about it. She wonders if that and that alone might keep Castle safe.

_Haven_ _'_ _t got it in you._

It's his voice in her head. Castle's. Quiet and sure, though she'd like to argue. She'd like to savor the taste of the fantasy a while. But he's known her better than she knows herself for a long time now.

_You really are remarkable, you know that?_

She doesn't have it in her.

"Where is he?" She asks at last, but it's anticlimactic. Cross doesn't even seem to register the question. "You know it's over. You didn't drag me out here for some super villain monologue. You set this up. The photo. The fire. All of it because . . ." She laughs, hardly believing the words as they spill out of her mouth. "Because _I_ _'_ _m_ your Hail Mary. So. _Where. Is. He?_ "

A phone rings just then. A shrill intrusion from the far end of the room. The kind of impossible moment that doesn't happen in real life. It leaves every nerve in her jangling.

He was expecting it, though. He rises from the bed, and the skin he wears shifts again. He slips back into the persona. The spy, though it's a last-ditch effort. She stares as he covers the room in a few strides, then pushes up from the bed. She stumbles after him.

She hears the sound of a drawer. He turns swiftly from the work bench and tosses something her way. Her arms fly up to protect her face. Pure defense, but she catches it. A phone, remarkably like the one he destroyed. The ring cuts off and starts again, almost immediately. She stares at it, pinned to the center of the room as he moves for the door. He still has the gun. Loose at his side, but ready enough.

He nods at her. At the phone.

"That'll be Martha." The name does something to him. It casts a shadow on his face, but he blanks it out so quickly she might have imagined it. He's straight and tall now. Hard and what passes for charming with him as he eases the door open. "Keep him alive. If you can."

He's going. The phone shrieks again. She stares down at it. Back at him, but he's _going._ Her thumb stabs at the phone as she lurches toward the door. He's around the corner already. He's gone, and she knows she's made a terrible mistake. She knows, but there's a voice pouring out of the phone. Her name. Frantic words running together.

"Martha," she whispers as she inches down the dark, steep stairs. "Martha I . . . have to . . . I have to go. He's . . "

" _Katherine."_ Martha's voice is sharp. Sudden control where there'd been galloping panic seconds before. It's like cool fingers threading through her hair. It's like shades drawn and the low, reassuring voice that's brought her this far.

She sinks on to the step and sags against the wall. "Martha."

" _Katherine. You listen to me. You have to get back to the city. Immediately. New York Presbyterian."_ She can hardly get the words out for tears, but they're clear enough. " _He's here. Darling . . . Richard. He's here."_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Just the epilogue now. Thanks for reading.


	17. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Kate hears herself asking questions. She sounds normal. She thinks she does, anyway, but it's all washing over her. Lanie's answers and all of it. She only holds on to pieces. Tiny pieces that she can fix in her mind."

* * *

Time snaps like a rubber band. She falls back into herself. There's so much to do.

There are things to tell Martha, because the hospital needs to know, don't they? Even if the words gather thick at the back of her throat, and her mind slows to a crawl, they need to know.

Martha has things to tell. Not the story, but what Kate needs to hear, though it's too little. Far too little, because they don't _know_. Not yet.

_Tests, darling. Dr. Parrish says it's standard . . ._

She has to go in a rush. There's a flood of apologies, Kate's end and Martha's, but they both have to go. There's so much to do.

Her weapon. She needs that. She _wants_ it. She's on her knees by the workbench, smashing at the lock box long after it's open. Long after the gun is back in her hands, she slams the dull metal against the floor.

There's the scene to secure—because it's a crime scene, isn't it?—and she doesn't even know what she needs to know. What there might be at all. She takes pictures with shaking hands. Just the phone, and she hates even the weight of it—anything Cross has touched—but it's better than nothing. She leaves a message for Brady in the end. It's after hours and out of his jurisdiction, but he'll call. It's good enough for now. It has to be.

There's a conversation with Ryan that's as short as she can make it, and she's grateful that it's him. Grateful for his quiet questions and blessed, silent acceptance that she's ok, even as Esposito rails in the background. She's grateful that he listens when she says that what she needs is for them to come get her _now._

" _We're on our way."_ He says finally, and his voice breaks for the first time. _"Beckett . . . Hold tight."_

"Hold tight." She leaves the room behind somehow. She finds herself suddenly standing in the shadow of the house with no sense of how she got there. She listens to voices over the water, as they filter in on the wind. She smells smoke and salt and fireworks now. Furtive, defiant light and sound. More voices and the end of all that. She whispers the words to herself again under an eyelash moon. "Hold tight."

* * *

"I don't know."

She says it a hundred times, but it's like Esposito can't stop himself. It's as if asking and asking and asking again is all there is to keep him from burying the needle of the speedometer. To keep him from taking every frustration out on a dark, curving road that's mercilessly as long as it's ever been.

Ryan steps in—again and again and again—but his own nerves get the better of him. He falls back against the seat, his face blank.

"An ambulance? He just . . . showed up. A John Doe in an empty ambulance?"

She looks down at the phone. At the scatter of texts and a dashed off email from Alexis. They're all arriving out of order. Chaos on their end or something to do with whatever Cross did to duplicate the signal. Both, probably.

She reads off the address again. The name of the coffee shop and the little she knows about the two freaked out EMTs. The random jumble of facts.

"He just showed up," she says for the hundredth time, but not the last. Far from the last.

It's not sinking in. Not for any of them.

* * *

The boys flank her as she strides into New York Presbyterian through the Emergency Department. Her gaze swings left and right and finds nothing. They're not here. Alexis and Martha and Lanie.

_Castle._

It's been hours. Of course they're not here. Not in this particular space, blinding white. Of course they're not, but it's crushing. The simple fact and another delay. More resistance. More, even now.

_We can only give information to the immediate family._

Esposito's eyes go black and Ryan drops back a step. The noise of it all roars in Kate's ears. The out-of-sync chirp of monitors and voices crackling overhead. The clatter of change and the percussion of cans dropping in the vending machine next to the desk. Broken conversations and people in pain.

She's dizzy with it, but Lanie is there then. Like a vision, she drops her own title on the woman behind the desk and slips her arm through Kate's to smooth things over. She barks something at Esposito, even as she reaches out to give his fingers a discreet squeeze. She leads the three of them through twisting corridors. From elevator to elevator. She fills in the gaps where she can.

Kate hears herself asking questions. She sounds normal. She thinks she does, anyway, but it's all washing over her. Lanie's answers and all of it. She only holds on to pieces. Tiny pieces that she can fix in her mind.

_Beat up pretty bad._

_Out of it._

_Tests._

_Coming around._

_Won't know until . . ._

They turn a corner. The narrow corridor spills out into the hush of a waiting area. Functional carpet and the awful upholstery of armless chairs all in a line. Another line at right angles and another at right angles to that. It all eats up sound and light after the echo and glare of polished tile, but more than that, it's a corner turned into another kind of place.

_Intensive Care_

She reads the low-hanging sign above the desk and hears her name, urgent and grateful before she can really make sense of it. Martha and Alexis surround her, as Lanie and Ryan and Esposito fade into the background. Staying close, but making themselves scarce. Standing ready for whatever's next.

"Fine. I'm fine," Kate says, though it doesn't do much to dispel the fear hanging on the letters of her name. She shakes her head. There's so much to tell. So much to ask, but later. _Later_. "Castle?"

It's all she can get out, but they hold each other tight. The three of them for a moment that's as long as it needs to be.

"Well he _looks_ dreadful." Martha draws back to arm's length at last and shakes her head. "No cameras. No press for a while, _that_ much is settled."

Kate laughs. She swipes a hand at her own cheeks. She's shaking, but it's relief. Faith that Martha being so perfectly herself means it's ok. It's going to be ok.

She looks to Alexis, absolutely fixed to Martha's side. Kate reaches out. She strokes the hair back from the girl's face. Alexis raises her red-rimmed eyes.

"He knows us," she says. She makes her voice firm, like they all need convincing. "He asked for you."

It's an absurd kind of kick to the middle of her. Air undecided, rushing in and out. He asked for her. She wasn't here. But she fights her way past it. Past everything that doesn't matter now. She gathers them both close again.

"He knows us," she whispers.

* * *

They have the waiting area to themselves. Ryan leaves, looking miserable about it, but Jenny's just back in the city with the baby, and the fire in the Hamptons made the news, somehow. He smiles, a little dazed, as Martha flings her arms around him. He lays a hand on Alexis's shoulder and says something her ear that makes the girl stand a little taller.

"We'll call," Kate says quietly as they drift toward Lanie and Esposito. "As soon as there's anything."

Ryan nods. "Tell him . . ." He trails off.

Esposito turns him by the shoulders and marches him toward the exit. "Got you covered. I'll make up something cool. Tell him you said it."

It's hard to be patient. Strangely hard to stay awake, suddenly. Adrenaline leaves Kate's body in waves and she leans into Martha. Esposito appears from nowhere and wraps her fingers around a cup of coffee like he knows the feeling.

"Want me to rough somebody up?" He looks at her hopefully. "Get some answers on what the hell kind of tests they're running all this time?"

"Javi!"

Lanie comes up behind to slap at him, but Kate smiles.

"Give them . . ." She screws up her face like she's thinking. She takes a sip of coffee. Enjoys the burn on her tongue, even though it's awful. "Twenty more minutes. Then violence."

The doors at the far end of the waiting area whoosh open like an answer. A small, dark-haired woman emerges. She hardly looks older than Alexis. Martha murmurs a name that Kate can't hear over the pounding in her ears and pronounces her _darling._

"She's a resident," Alexis adds. "Neurology."

 _Neurology._ Kate sounds it out. Tastes it on her tongue. Fear and possibility. Hope, because it has to be ok.

"Just me." The doctor holds up her hands apologetically as she approaches. "But he'll be up soon, I promise."

Martha picks up the young woman's inquiring look and slides a firm arm around Kate. "Dr. Heller. My daughter-in-law," she says, unfazed at the practically audible blink the claim draws from everyone who isn't Martha. "Detective Kate Beckett."

She leans into the title—into both titles—just a little, and it bears Kate up. She extends her hand and likes the woman for her firm grasp and the way she includes them all in the invitation to sit. She likes her for the succinct, no-nonsense way she lays things out and the fact that she looks to Lanie for help in translation.

"Physically, he's in remarkably good shape overall. The care he received was quite . . . competent. Military?"

It's half a question. She looks from Kate to Esposito. They share a look in turn. Something that's not even a nod, but he excuses himself. He'll check in with Brady. Get the local chief on it. He'll take care of that and bring the whole damned room here if they need to.

"We're . . . working on what exactly happened after the accident." Kate turns back to the doctor. To Martha and Alexis and the things they're steeling themselves for. "He's been . . . Whatever you need to know . . ." She trails off, helpless.

Heller nods. She takes it in stride and moves on. "Most of the physical trauma is healing well. Ribs, the right radius and left humerus. Everything other than the left femur. An orthopedist will make the call on that. Tomorrow," she adds hastily as they all sag into one another, battered by the thought of more tests yet to come. "Tomorrow at the earliest, but we're probably looking at a surgery to realign and stabilize."

Kate gives her a grateful smile. She takes a breath, then. A running start at the thing it scares her most to ask.

"Alexis said . . ."

The words go. The air for them and the will to bring them into the world. Alexis squeezes her hand. She takes up the burden.

"He seemed to know us," she begins uncertainly. "He seemed . . . aware?"

Heller is silent longer than any of them can stand, but there's something soothing about the time she takes when the answer comes at last, calm and measured. It has the ring of careful truth and hope underneath.

"Cognitive function, memory. That's obviously our biggest concern. He's been . . . somewhat overmedicated from our perspective, but that was probably wise given the limitations for care." She cuts herself off. Stows away the extended disclaimer when she catches Kate's sharp look and a shift in Lanie's posture. She moves on. "He's responsive across a broad range of tests. That's good news."

"But there's bad news." Kate sits up straighter. She leans in, carrying strength forward. Alexis's hand on one shoulder, Martha's fingers reaching for hers.

"There are deficits we'll need to assess further. For right now, we know his speech is slow to come and disordered." The doctor holds up a hand. "Some of it's disorientation. Grogginess from the drugs. But we suspect aphasia from the head trauma."

"Aphasia." Martha's alarm radiates out from her, even though her voice is low. "Like with a stroke?"

Kate fights down a sharp wriggle of horrified amusement. A silent Castle. The thought is awful. Just awful.

"Similar, but not quite the same." Dr. Heller takes a moment to read them. To see how much they're ready for. Kate wonders herself. "First, it's more properly _dys_ phasia. He knows the names of things—the words he wants—but something else pops out of his mouth. A related word or something that starts with a similar sound."

"That's good, right?" Alexis looks from Heller to Lanie and back. "It means it's likely things are still working and his brain is able to find ways around . . ." She stops herself. "Problems."

Her voice is soft by the finish of it. _Damage._ It's the thing none of them is saying, but the doctor nods encouragement.

"Yes. It's a good sign, and he's asked for something to write with." She says it like she understands. Like she knows how much weight the simple fact carries. "He's as quick and accurate with the white board as pain and the splint will allow."

"Splint," Kate repeats. "Right radius . . . should he be writing?"

"No," Heller says sharply. "But he's very persuasive." She gives them a full-on smile. One Kate knows. They all know it, because the world loves him. "He likes the four-dollar words."

A ripple of laughter that runs through the three of them at that. Kate, Martha, and Alexis. Lanie smiles. She rests a hand on Kate's knee, and her voice cuts through it. Steady and neutral, but serious. "Recovery?"

"Speech therapy and time," Heller says. That's steady, too. Confident, even though she warns them again about tests. Further assessment. "There's a good chance it'll all come back."

Somehow it's this that breaks them all at once. A wholly different kind of relief that's heavier. That comes with _what next?_ attached to it. Lanie murmurs that she'll be nearby if they need her. That she'll bring Esposito up to speed. She slips away to give them their privacy.

Kate's head drops and she feels Martha's cheek against her shoulder blade. Alexis slips from her chair to crowd in close.

_A good chance._

* * *

_Visiting hours are over._

The canned announcement rings out over and over again. It scrapes Kate's nerves raw, though no one seems to question their outpost in the waiting area. They get some sidelong looks, and every once in a while, steps falter. There are hushed discussions off to the side, and she's afraid every time. Afraid that that they'll ask.

_Aren't you . . . ?_

_So it's true, then . . ._

_I knew he couldn't be . . ._

She's afraid of more than that. Of what comes next, except she can't be. Not right now. She can't be.

No one approaches until heavy sigh of the double doors sounds again and a large man in scrubs makes a beeline for them.

"One at a time."

Martha and Alexis are urging her up before he's even finished saying it. They shush her as she tries to protest.

_Darling, we've both already . . ._

_I promised. He asked for you . . ._

She goes. She casts one guilty glance behind her, then she's racing. Quick steps to keep up. She follows the man's broad, blue back down another polished hallway. _Leonard_. That's what Alexis called him.

"Will they . . . " She stutters. She makes a helpless gesture back toward the waiting area. "After I . . .?"

"Visiting hours are over." Leonard's head swings around. His voice is gruff, but he winks. "Then again, everyone important left a while ago. One at a time."

Kate smiles wide enough that it hurts. It feels like the kindest thing anyone has said to her in weeks. She wants to throw her arms around him, but he comes to a stop in front of a wide door. The details draw her in. The scarred kick plate and the awful shade of mauve above it. The bent metal blinds covering the narrow window. She can't see anything inside.

Her fingers drift up of their own volition. They find the transparent plastic holder. The bright orange folder inside. The letters of his name.

"He's a troublemaker." Leonard lifts his chin toward the door. "You'll keep him in line?"

"Promise," she says. It's a whisper the first time. Her voice failing her, because she can't quite believe it. She can't quite believe this isn't another empty room. Another heartbreak. But Leonard scowls and she reaches for belief. She finds it beneath everything. Beneath fear and uncertainty and pain. _Belief._ It's been all along.

"Promise."

* * *

She pushes through the door, eager and terrified at once.

It's a small room, dim save for the glow monitors and one sconce high above the bed. After the wide, strange hush of the waiting area, it's loud and close. The steady piercing beep of his heart rate. The rush of air in and out of a blood pressure cuff. His breathing.

 _His breathing_.

She closes the distance in halting steps, and her fingers wrap tight around molded plastic railing. His eyes are closed. His face is half turned away, and even so she sees how thin he is. She sees the hollows of his cheeks and the dark circles under his eyes. Lines marring his forehead and more carved deep on either side of his mouth.

 _Pain_ , she thinks. He's been in so much pain and alone all this time.

But he turns the second she's near. A sharp inhalation and that instant of satisfaction the exact moment he knows she's there. It's so like a hundred mornings she's woken him without a word or touch that she's smiling hard when his eyes open.

Her smile. It's the first thing he sees. He blinks hard to focus, and she's glad that it's the first thing.

"Castle. Hey." Her hand creeps through the hills and valleys of the blanket. It slips over his skin, alighting for just a moment on the tape where the IV goes into his arm. On the rough surface of the short splint that wraps across his palm.

He catches her fingertips. A slow, deliberate curl of his own, and she can tell it hurts him. She sees the flicker of pain on his brow, but he won't let go. It's too much. Four points of contact. Her own cool skin meeting the warmth of his. The determined way he holds on. It's almost too much.

"Found me," he says. It's loose. Sloppy, but smug underneath. A smile of his own, even if his mouth is too tired to curl up at the corners. "Kate. Knew you . . ."

She feels the words fail him. The weak flex of muscle and restlessness traveling through him. Creases in his forehead, as his eyes flick to the bedside table. The whiteboard is there. A single word across it in huge, shaky capitals. _EXCRUCIATING_.

She's laughing even as tears spill down her cheeks. She leans away from him. She reaches for it, but he tugs her back. It's as much force as he can muster, and the lines of his face smooth right out when she stills. He smiles full on this time.

"Found me."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So, that's it. A lot of words under the bridge when I intended to write Perigee as a one-shot back in June. I have a start on a one-shot to book end the series, but I'll post that as its own piece. Thank you for reading.


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